underclothes
by Bawgdan
Summary: The key to happiness is wisdom, but Aerith's appetite for mischief and spite is much too hard to satisfy. (AU)
1. Satellites In Orbit

**"Lust rubied my blood, gave me the gait of an uncaught criminal, and I felt like I could walk forever." ~ Stephanie Danler**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

There are a millions ways to ask for 'help'. Reno had figured them all out before puberty-exhausted every single one. For some odd reason, he is still alive and he's not sure if escaping death so many times is something to proud be of.

The elevator doors slide open and Rufus greets Reno with a smile that touches the corners of his eyes.

"What the hell..." Reno wheezes. The light of Midgar pierces through the glass walls. Rufus's reflection appears to be suspended along the glittering horizon. The stars are smothered by the orange glow of pollution, but Reno still hasn't gotten used to the view. There's something humble about how ugly the city looks at night; a visual reminder that he's not doing God's work.

"It took you long enough," Rufus looks down at his watch.

The elevator pings and Reno hastily stumbles in before the doors shut, sealing his fate. His soul evacuates his body, because he knew better but Rufus is also his superior. Reno stands across from him, crossing his arms. Loose ends of hair caught in his lashes–burning holes into Rufus's forehead.

"Daddy ShinRa pays me to be precise." Reno adjusts his suit jacket, a cough rattling his throat.

For five minutes, they say nothing to each other. The elevator floats downward, putting distance between Reno's throbbing headache and the starless sky. Rufus shuffles his hands in his pocket, his eyes never leaving Reno's, lips parting as if he were about to break into song.

If Reno were good at telling jokes, he would've made a witty comparison of the weather to the pending nose bleed of a slight overdose, but he can't say 'no' to Rufus. No one could and even if one were to turn down Rufus ShinRa, he would somehow bend the situation around himself anyway. Sometimes, it has little to do with nepotism. Rufus is just that good at convincing the masses to jump off a bridge.

"I'm clean." Reno's voice is the drop of a pen. Rufus pulls out a tiny clear bag and it's filled with Reno's worst nightmare.

"You are. And you smell nice." Rufus leans against the glass wall.

"I'm serious." Reno looks at the descending number of floors, blaring red above the buttons.

"You're a killjoy."

"Aren't we go'n on business?"

"Since when did that ever matter to you, Reno?" Rufus's pale hair catches the reflection of the flickering city lights.

The first time he pointed a gun at Cissnei and threatened to spell his name out with her brains along the wall. The last time he fucked her so hard, she bled. **Tic tic tic**. They both pause. **Tic tic tic**. Reno can hear Rufus's watch over the hum of the elevator.

Reno's silence isn't a good enough answer and Rufus topples into a fit of laughter.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder!"

"That is what they say. Too bad I don't got a heart," Reno says flatly.

Rufus leans forward, shoving the packet back in his pocket, narrowing his sights, hanging on to his last hearty suspire.

"People don't change, Reno. They only get older and slower. If this is about you becoming a better person..." Rufus swallows a cackle. "Then you need to take a sharper look at your surroundings. Good people don't kill. Good people don't sneak, steal, or lie."

Reno's eyes dart from Rufus's as he chews the inside of his jaw.

"You can help old ladies cross the street. Open doors for people. Give one gil to a homeless slug, but that will never erase all the times you've beaten someone to death. Nor all the unclean mouths that have sucked your dick." Rufus straightens himself as his mood dips and darkens. He gives Reno a fake look of empathy, steps forward, and jabs a finger in Reno's chest. "You're still that person and will die that person."

Reno is expressionless. Tired and cold. He licks his chapped lips, rolls his eyes and turns his back to Rufus. The elevator reaches the grand lobby floor and the bell hums.

"Suit yourself." Reno's voice vibrates.

The doors slide open.

.

.

.

Aerith, are you happy?

The answer is made up of indifference. Aerith Gainsborough is far from unhappy, she sure as hell isn't content with the way things have turned out. Not with just herself, but with the state of everything else that surrounded her.

The mascara glues her eyelashes together. Her eyes are runny and red but the Honey Bee Inn is dark enough to hide her allergic reaction to the cheapness of her makeup. The shadows of the other girls dance across the cream walls of their dressing room. It's the only room that has a plain appearance– she has always wondered if the nakedness of their 'sanctuary' is intentional. It's dullness spites their gaudy uniforms. As she stuffs her tiny breasts inside of the low cut corset, she imagines Zack creeping up behind her, hiding his disappointment under the flicker of the fluorescent light bulbs. With a pair of sad pretty eyes that somewhat match hers– she has more than a mouthful for him. Anger too heavy for the ink to carry in her letters.

It's not like he ever wrote back. She thinks sourly, picking up the curlers to burn the silkiness of her hair.

But don't act like you don't know why he never wrote back. She checks herself. Soul-mates; that one and only individual purposefully crafted by the hand of god specifically for you. Whoever of whatever that is supposed to be simply doesn't live inside of her. Apathy has gutted her like a fish, hanging her skin and bones out to dry.

As she contemplates her womanhood, her body bursting from the tight confines of her nightly costume– her thighs squeezing through the fishnet stockings and the unflattering fold of armpit fat around her corset, Aerith cultivates an understanding. Like always whenever she starts to think that she's too good to be prancing around in glittery plastic wings. She cultivates an understanding that this is what happens when you're stuck in the slums. Cetra or not, you make shitty decisions. The curler sizzles around a lock and she grimaces at the smell of burnt hair.

Aerith, have you found what you've been searching for?

Would Zack truly be disappointed in her? She's only a bottle girl and hasn't fallen to the bottom yet to ever consider selling herself. For the time being, she has simply slipped between the cracks, accepting that happiness is an expensive religion and her smile is only a reflected fragment of her childhood. Being a kid was simple, even when the poisoned soil caught the sewage that ran thick through the streets, seeping from the top.

When Aerith finishes pinning up the ringlets of her hair, she observes herself in the mirror. She observes that she is the last girl standing in the dressing room. Always the last Honey Bee on the floor.

Look how far away you have strayed from yourself. Her conscience echoes. She remembers stumbling across a dead body in an alleyway. She planted a seed there when she was ten. A battered prostitute with blood between her thighs. Aerith broke off a piece of her innocence and gently placed it in that forgotten woman's hand, curling her fingers sweetly and kissing her knuckles.

Cetra. Misery. Compatibility most unfathomable.

Aerith applies a lip-gloss that tastes like chocolate, forgetting that she can't spell and that she has the reading skills of a fifth grader. Maybe Zack never wrote back because he couldn't understand whatever the hell she was trying to say.

She takes a deep breath and squeezes her boobs together to stir up false confidence, then drops her hands to readjust the itchy, frilly yellow panties that bottle girls were required to wear.

Who you are supposed to be tonight?

Aerith decides tonight that she will be Natalie. Like Sophie, Athena, and the bold Andromeda, Natalie will spill from their lips like an undiscovered waterfall. Never like the gentle pecks of the rain against blossoming petals.

What sets the Honey Bees apart are their shoes. It's the only mean that they have in showing their personalities. Aerith had long settled with a open toed chunky heel of five inches. Some of the Bees float around in seven inch stilettos, giving an air of perpetual ascension-reminding Don's 'good' patrons that they were still unattainable and leagues away.

 **You have my permission to touch me.**

It's their mantra. The epigraph above the plush rooms that might as well be their graves (only Aerith thinks this grimly).

But her role isn't hard. Pour drinks, get them to stare at her forced cleavage until they are drunk enough to tip her. Conversation is easy and lying, for Aerith, is as natural as breathing. She thinks she's smarter than the rest of the Bees.

Too uppity for the black pasties, too pretty to wrap her legs around strangers but if she did, she tells herself she'd run all the other girls out of business. She would steal all of their customers. Bottle girls are the wingmen for the main attractions. Easy gil.

Don Corneo's 'kingdom' reeked of bloodied pride and the soiled panties of prostitutes. Stolen dragons of gold snake up pillars of red, stripped of their meaning. The 'Bee Hive' looks less like a honeycomb and more like a cheapened version of a Wutainese whorehouse. There are light fixtures with the semblance of fireflies dangling from the ceiling that grossly contrast the theme of the Bees.

"Table four," The Bee with a short pixie cut behind the bar slides Aerith a tray of two glasses. The dark liquor sloshes and spills over the brim.

"What?" Aerith stops staring at the fake fireflies, runs her hand along her corset and blinks away her self-depreciating thoughts.

"You're covering for Janice," She says between her teeth, cleaning out a glass. Aerith doesn't know who Janice is by face, but she hears the name a lot. They both stare at each other until Aerith floats back down to reality.

"Right..." Aerith reaches for the tray and wobbles off on her heels. She hopes Janice is ok.

.

.

Reno sinks in the deep red cushion, revealing a pale ankle as he props a foot on his knee. Rufus stares ahead attentively, watching Don sift through tons of paper work under a thick cloud of cigar smoke. Reno's attention seesaws from the husky goons that gritted their teeth and the nice legs of the passing Honey Bees. He wonders how Tseng makes these trips and manages to keep his cool.

"ShinRa, you expect too much of me." Don coughed, breaking the fog of silence and dumps the papers onto the table.

"We compensate you well, Corneo." Rufus has this way of speaking that commands attention. His voice rises and disperses like a disease, or a familiar song that everyone knows the words to but wishes they could forget. His cadence penetrates the denseness of his surroundings. Rufus's hands move from his pockets to the table and from some hidden place he spins a pocket knife between his fingers.

"For what this contract is asking, I'm better off rebuking your compensation." Don's laughter is shrill and disgusting, but Rufus's lips curl. From the plastic bag, he empties the sparkling white clumps onto the glass table. Don's men stare at Reno as if they were waiting for him to combust, or they could sense his discomfort, but it was only a matter of time if they kept eyeing him like a rare piece of steak.

"I don't think it's asking for too much." Rufus cants ever so sharply, crushing the coke with his knife.

"It wouldn't be wise to decline it, fatso," Reno spat and his words are like bullets tearing through flesh, shattering bone.

Rufus glances at Reno sideways, still smiling as Don erupted into a storm of laughter crass enough to destroy the red walls. He rolls back into his seat and his belly jumps with his powerful chortles.

And Reno and Rufus laugh with him.

"You've got jokes, kid?" Those were fighting words. Reno's laughter flat lines like a dead thing. He lifts a leg and shoves a foot into the table, sending the bottles and glass and papers toppling into a mess. The crash rings against the floor and Don's men reflexively turn their guns and Rufus simply sighs. He leans forward, inhaling a long line. The room stops breathing.

"Are we not reasonable men?" Rufus sits straight, running a hand through his hair. His bangs curling back. His wet eyes shine with amusement.

A Bee drops to her knees and busies herself with cleaning the mess. Despite her efforts to remain unnoticed, Rufus grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks off her knees.

A yelp escapes Aerith, but she doesn't recoil from him. She obeys like all people did in the presence of rich men. Staggering to her feet, Rufus forces her to sit at the edge of his seat. Her hair still tangled around his wrist.

"You seem like a character with good judgment!" Rufus gestures at the surrounding men with his knife. Aerith knew misery, but held a closer relationship with fear. She becomes stiff in his grasp, his hands wandering from her scalp to the awkward bend of her hip.

"Do we not look like reasonable men?" Rufus ShinRa gapes at her with feigned perplexity, with bated breath for her most honest observation. Aerith's glare shifts around the table until her eyes lock with the man who owned her. Don folds his hand on his chest but doesn't smother his displeasure.

Even in the face of adversity, she is paid to sell fantasy. If that meant the fantasy of her death or abuse, she's expected to make it worthwhile.

"Well, Mister ShinRa..." It pumps her blood, makes her dizzy that she's in the clutches of her enemy. Rufus's attention weighs on her. He's prettier in person than in the daily paper. If only you knew– her conscience hums and for a moment she loses her grasp on the voices from the other life. Their whispers becoming louder. "I've yet to meet a reasonable man. What's a reasonable man s'posed to look like?"

Rufus shifts his posture, narrowing his eyes. His lips fall into a straight line as he contemplates the simplicity of her answer. He looks from her to Reno, who is even more on edge.

"Reno...what do you think a reasonable gentleman looks like?" Rufus's sincerity is severe.

A man cracks his knuckles but Don appears to be pleased with Aerith. He settles into his seat. What a mess it would've been to upset Rufus ShinRa.

"Shit, I wouldn't know. I ain't ever claimed to be reasonable." Reno's eyes don't ease.

"What do you think a good reasonable man looks like, dear?" Don's tone is pointed. Aerith shrinks a little.

Aerith bites her bottom lip and looks off as if she were truly thinking. She leans against Rufus and he reciprocates the gesture. In another life, she could have been an actress. Her life is made up of a nice act and fabricated truths. Zack never seemed to pick up on her bad habits, but his hands weren't big enough to hold her. Nobodies hands were truthfully. Being a beautiful concept has its perks, until she finds herself lonely.

She stops pretending to think, she stops biting her lips and they are swollen red. Aerith swallows the flavor of her lip-gloss.

"My mama always says that a good reasonable man knows when to be quiet. Like in school, we learned about predators and prey. Those funny pictures always showed a tiger peeking through the tall grass, watching and waiting...I think a good man is sorta like that. When he wants something, he waits for the right time to take it." Aerith's back is sore from balancing on the arm of the chair.

"Patience..." Reno's breath is a short laugh.

"Patience." Aerith glares at him, but he hasn't looked at her. What stands out the most about him is his dark suit. She knows it too well and it sends her heart crashing into her stomach. She resists the urge to run, the innate desire to flee– it's rooted so deep in her that it's like wanting water. Meandering between her wicked curiosity and disdain, she considers how much blood is trapped in the threads of his uniform. He isn't Tseng so there isn't any pity to fix on to her. She's not safe, but when has she ever been safe?

The hostility has died and the Honey Bee Inn regains the normalcy of its pulse. Save for Aerith.

"Patience!" Rufus sings, nodding his head at the table of men. He releases Aerith as he shifts in his seat. The fabric of his white suit hums against the leather seat. He bows his head once more and finishes the last line of coke.

"The woman has spoken!" Rufus beats a fist down on the table. "Patience! I have enough of that to extend to you Don."

He gains a grave look, his muscles shifting in the snugness of his suit, "To think Reeve was nice enough to type it all up for you. He's going to be so disappointed when he finds out that you didn't find it agreeable."

"The price isn't right." Is all Don said. His unwillingness to compromise shocks everyone but Rufus and Reno.

"Patience." Rufus utters once more.

For a while, no one moves. Not even Aerith. She waits for someone to give her an order. Rufus stands, readjusting himself in his suit. The glowing fireflies cast a pale halo around his crown. Aerith gets of sense of dread. Her throat tightens and her palms become clammy.

The moment Aerith thinks she's vanished into the obscurity of plastic wings, Rufus turns to meet her gaze, looking as if he's lost something or he's caught her in the middle of a forest. He smiles, just like in the many pictures she's seen. Rufus takes her in from head to toe, rolling his tongue around in his mouth.

"How much?" He says to her, as though he's happened upon an epiphany.

What she hears is; Who is Aerith Gainsborough?

"Oh...no..I'm not..." Aerith's voice becomes small. I'm just a glorified waitress in tacky lingerie.

"Tell him how much." Don insists.

Suddenly, her mascara becomes heavy upon her eyes. The Turk stands and their eyes finally meet. He stood a lanky six feet, a few inches taller than Rufus. Aerith's thoughts become crisscrossed as everyone waits for an answer.

The thing about hunger, literally and metaphorically, is that it leaves the jaws lax, loosens lips, and arouses goose bumps. Aerith stands a little taller, reminds herself that she's been starving for too long. Her mouth waters much to the displeasure of Gaia's garden locked inside of her. She imagines the flowers wrapped around her bones wilting.

"A thousand gil." Aerith states boldly. She sullenly muddles to herself– at least he smells nice.

Rufus's mouth cracks into a deep smile and when he laughs, the rest join him save for Reno. But Rufus is tickled for other reasons. In all of his endeavors at the Honey Bee Inn, he's never been demanded such a price. He glances at Don and nods slowly, savoring the moment.

"A thousand gil." Rufus digs into his suit jacket for a wad of gil.

"Yep." Aerith rolls a heel into the carpet.

He invades her personal space, raising the wad of gil above her head. Rufus is so close that his features become blurry and he smells like a field of opportunities. The things she will be able to achieve with a thousand gil. A new pair of shoes or a dress.

Aerith doesn't waver from his nearness. He looks less wicked holding the answer for tomorrow. Halo, shadows, and all. She knows that he wants her to reach and beg for it, but that's not how she plays games. Rufus becomes privy to her boldness when she pouts.

"The papers don't say nothin bout you be'n a bluffer, Mister ShinRa." She sweetly coaxes him.

With that he releases the gil and they flutter down and around them a hopeless flurry. Aerith doesn't immediately reach to grab the bills. She further cultivates her cheekiness.

"Go get me a drink and clean this shit up." Is all he says to her. Aerith knows better than to ask him 'what he likes.' Every Bee is supposed to be familiar with what he fancies. She nods, tucking a floppy curl behind her ear, dipping to collect her tip before she struts off to figure out what drink he is partial to.

Reno has been ready to leave the moment he set eyes on the glaring neon signs that dangled from the lopsided buildings. Being beneath the plate never meant anything good. No matter how much he wishes to escape it, he always ends up in this bowl of shit. Knee deep in someone else's shit.

He smothers a groan when he realizes that Rufus intends to stay for one of those night long binges that everyone in the company whispers about. The many nights Tseng had subjected himself to. Rufus opens his arms and turns on his heels.

"Gentlemen!" He starts but pauses. A cue for everyone to lean in and behold his gospel. "Let us put this disagreement behind us for now."

Reno flops back into his seat and the leathery cushions sigh at the impact. Rufus snaps his fingers at someone in the smoky distance then pinches the crease in his pants as he sat back down. Don's personal army disperses and it's just the three of them. Two powerful men in their own right and one unlucky asshole.

.

 **Any moment now.**

Reno and Aerith both think.

 **Any moment now** , they'd be given some moment of freedom.

.

Before Rufus vanishes behind one of those tomb like doors, he gently tugs Reno by the collar.

"What exactly are you trying to atone for?" His pupils have swallowed the color of his eyes, but his voice still retains that smooth finesse that convinces his victims to trust him again. The Two Bees he paid for slip around them, their heels clacking into the dimly lit room.

"Nothing. Nothing at all, boss." Reno says rather negligently. The long hours into the night had allowed him to shut off the visceral part of him that loves to destroy things. Because Cissnei had asked him to change, he still hopes, even in her absence, that his goodness would somehow manifest her back into his life.

Rufus's palm flattens against Reno's chest. He sucks in a breath and pats the Turk's chest three times. Rufus grinds his teeth together, searching for something to say but he's too smacked to conjure up his charm.

So he gives Reno a slow nod before dipping into his dalliance.

And Reno does what he is expected to do. Stand by the door unscathed by the evening's events.

Like a trained dog.

.

.

It's much faster getting undressed. Aerith peels herself out of her uniform like she's shedding layers of dry, dead skin, kicking her shoes from her swollen feet. With the sleeve of her denim jacket, she wipes the makeup from her face carelessly. Her lip gloss smudges against the corners of her mouth and stains her teeth. And this is the pinnacle of her nights. It allows her to feel in control.

Barriers, that's what someone had told her. She had way too many barriers, but she remembers looking at them and wondering how the hell they survived without any?

When did having too many barriers become a problem?

Aerith flops into the fuzzy stool, bending forward to lace up her boots. Her curls are now stiff from all that hair spray and they part over her shoulders like separate extensions of her mood.

"You didn't fall on your face." A Bee named Pepper drops a small plastic bag in her lap. Inside are two fat pill. "Don says to take tomorrow night off."

Before Aerith can reject the drugs, Pepper is on her way out of the dressing room.

She stares down at the bag. Runs her fingers against the plastic and presses down on the pills. They are thick enough to put a horse to sleep. Five minutes pass before she accepts the weird place she's in. There's no point in daydreaming about the 'could bes'.

Some of the Bees like to go on about this thing called the 'glass ceiling'. Aerith always wonders why it matters to them. For one, the ceiling isn't glass. It's made of impenetrable metal. And two, no one leaves the sectors. Not without some soul shattering compromise.

"Honey, none of us are going anywhere anytime soon." They all had laughed but not like they believed it. They had saw some silver lining to their plight.

Aerith takes the bag in her hand, shoves it in her bra for safe keeping. Before reaching for the straps of her heels and tossing her purse over a shoulder, she gives herself a long look in the mirror.

This isn't rock bottom. Not yet.

.

.

Aerith passes the bar. With her quick pace, her stiff hair and breast bounce. The tiny bag presses into her skin– she is sure later the friction will leave something similar to a paper cut. Someone says good-bye, three people speak to her on her way out but she shirks a very weak huff.

When her hand reaches the handle of the exit, she scoffs at the idea of her barriers as her feet squish against the cool sole of her boots. Not looking left, right, nor behind her. Straight ahead to nowhere in particular. Once she steps outside of the Honey Bee Inn she will become invisible. The burden is behind her for the next forty eight hours.

The strange thing about the slums, while poverty does require some level of self-awareness about the world, reality too is easily distorted. The world likes to scapegoat men like Rufus ShinRa for being hard to please, with his broad appetite for wickedness, but poor men are just as bad. There's nothing in the world more terrifying than a man who robs to feed his five children. Extreme conditions can cause anyone to be hazardous. It's why religions denounce excess. At least, that's how Aerith has figured it all for herself.

She steps outside of the brothel and is assaulted by the funk of sewers. Twenty something years and she's still not used to it. And the air always feels damp beneath the plate. Everyone gets a perpetual glaze of humidity on top of their skin.

Aerith pauses, cupping her hands around her chest to feel for the bag, considering if she should drop one pill down her throat for the agonizing journey home.

Someone next to her heaves a disturbing, long winded, wheezy breath and she turns to her side.

It's the red-head Turk. A cloud of smoke curling up and around his nose. She stiffens but doesn't readily let her limbs turn to jell-o. Aerith continues to pat at her chest and stares directly at him, with her heels dangling around her wrist.

"Do ya get a bonus for standing outside and groping yourself?" Though his eyes are in her direction, it doesn't feel like he's looking at her.

Aerith hesitates but eventually her lips curl, revealing her teeth. She hacks up an inelegant laugh.

"Nah. It's not like that at all. Just making sure I'm still all here. In one piece." She's not. Her insides rumble a little. For many reasons.

The Turk gives her a perfunctory shrug, lips spreading into a frown. It causes his face to wrinkle, but it doesn't lessen his slight appeal. He takes another drag of his cigarette and gathers a contemplativeness. She waits for him to say something profound.

"Are you not all there?" It's a rhetorical question. She knows the answer doesn't matter but she sometimes likes to hear herself talk.

"You ever shake a box filled with broken glass? That's me."

"Dark." This time the smoke pours from his nostrils.

"I'm a complex person."

"That's the right thing to say I guess." The Turk drags his eyes down the dirty street. The flashing signs reflect on his skin. It looks like he's glowing from within.

Aerith never forgets a face. It's names that she cant remember.

She's learned overtime that there are two types of people: the ones you're drawn to for no good reason at all, and those who are drawn to you for no good reason at all but you ignore them. It's the cycle of a snake eating its own tail.

"Can I have one?" She pipes up after a long awkward pause, dropping her hands from her chest. Her heels slap against her hips.

He plucks the cigarette from his lips, hands it to her half burnt. She notices how large and pale his hands are. As she reaches for the cigarette, Aerith resists the urge to touch the sharp jutting bone of his wrist. Her fingers do caress the rough part of his cuticles.

For no good reason, it makes the back of her ears hot.

"My mouth is hella dirty." He smiles for the first time all evening.

It was another one of those gross days. The rain above the plate seeps down into the potholes and splits. Lifting the smell of poverty, blood, and corroded metals.

Aerith wants him to look at her.

"Wouldn't be my first dirty mouth." She slides the cigarette between her lips and holds it there. "Why are you out here and not in there?"

"Don't need my dick stroked. I got better things to spend my money on."

"So you've got a strong moral compass?" Aerith has never smoked a cigarette in her life but she wants him to find her willingness attractive.

He's an acquired taste, but still pretty to look at. She notices how much darker his lips are compared to the rest of his skin. And she tries to imagine his nipples being the same color.

"Not really. Random sex is just boring. When you've had it one time, you've had it all."

"Only men in love say things like that." Aerith takes the cigarette from her mouth, observing it in her hands. The smoke is aesthetically pleasing set against her dark red nails.

"I think you're really presumptuous." He drops his head to give her an amused look. Her next rebuttal gets hung in her throat. She's thrown off by how bright his eyes are in the dark. Immediately she wants to get to know him. It's a depraved unladylike longing.

"You didn't say I was wrong." She doesn't shrink. If anything, she stands a little straighter. Her smile deepens at his challenging tone.

"I didn't say you were right either."

A burning sensation spreads in her chest. He's a Turk. He knows Tseng. He has no idea who she is. But he should...

They both stare at each other. Distant gun shots thwart the silence. Bullets ricochet against the pipes above their heads. Somewhere, someone has died or thinly escaped their ticket out of this wasteland.

Neither of them flinch.

"You wasted my cigarette." His lilt dips.

"I really just wanted ya to talk to me." Her voice is coarser.

Another long wordless moment. Aerith's footsteps shrinks the space between them. She's close enough to smell his sweat. Her head only reaches where his collarbone starts. Raising her hand, she brings the cigarette back to her lips, inhales deeply, puffing her cheeks until burn reaches the fingertips. She strangles on the smoke, choking turns into dry coughing and it all floats from her mouth.

Flecks of her spit sprinkles his throat.

"Now that you've got my attention– what?" There's a graveness about his voice. He's irritated with curiosity.

"I can help with that broken heart of yours." Sputtering, she holds up her free hand and wiggles all five of her fingers. "5 gil for my thoughts."

"This is really what you're good at." He says so bitterly, Aerith can taste the dip in his mood. But the Turk doesn't withdraw– his glower is so heavy she's sure he can see her pumping blood vessels. "Selling yourself."

"I only sell drinks and compliments." She paints his face in the back of her mind. His sharp nose, his clear eyes, the fried ends of his hair. She allows her gaze to wonder the sharp corners of his features, her eyes stopping at his dry but finely shaped cupid's bow.

"What's your name anyway huh?" She drops the cigarette butt to the ground.

"Does it matter?"

"I just wanna know. To be honest, I'm not used to your type look'n through me."

"What's my type?"

"Man is your type."

"Reno. Are you satisfied?"

"Reno..." She rolls the syllables on her tongue. Savors it. Not sure if she likes it.

"Your name?" The agitation in his voice dwindles to amusement.

"When the wings are off I'm nameless." She keeps her lips parted.

"I must gotta pay for it?"

"It has no price. You can try paying for a lie though." Still, after all this time, he's not ensnared by her charm.

And Reno laughs genuinely. Revealing his uneven teeth. The corners of his eyes wrinkle.

"Sure. Sure, miss." He throws his hands up and steps away from her, backs himself against the wall and digs into his pockets for another cigarette.

Before wishing him a terrible evening, Aerith digs into her bra for the pills. Reno watches her intently.

She fishes out the bag and the fabric of her dress bunches, creases around her bra. Aerith dips her fingers into the bag, dragging out the first pill.

Pops it into her mouth and swallows it dry. Her throat bobs when she throws her head back. When it gets all the way down she cries soft satisfaction.

"Knock yourself out." She tosses him the remaining pill. He catches it. "Hope it makes the time fly."

Reno eyes her back as she walks away. Doesn't look away until her body steps into the blur of the neon lights. Stranger things have happened. Stranger people exist. He opens his hand and stares at the pill.

There's no one around to witness him breaking a promise and time will either stop or jump forward.

With two fingers, he slides the pill on his tongue, fills his mouth with saliva then swallows.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

 **AN: Clearly, this is an AU. I've taken many creative liberties. I've rewritten this story a million time over years. There's been many iterations of it and I think this is the version I'm happy with. Possibly sticking with. I know it's been two years since I've even started this thing and I'm just now updating. Thank you for taking the time to open and digest this. It means a lot when people read anything write. I hope you stick around.**


	2. Taurus And Aquarius

**"I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said. "You get hold of their soul then." ~ L.M. Montgomery**

.

.

.

.

.

.

Aerith had been born with a strong kinship to nature. She knew what it felt like to be an ant. Took joy in resting her head against the soil, listening for the growing roots deep deep in the ground. Her talent is knowing. Sometimes the spirits shared what she would prefer discovering on her own. The hard questions though, that's when they were the most quiet. One day, she just got tired of wondering and demanded that the universe tell her why good people suffer. And the cosmos told her—life is indifferent to goodness.

She wakes up sweaty. In her sleep she had kicked the covers to the floor. Her jaws ache from grinding her teeth all night. Aerith brushes back the tangles of sweaty curls from her face, taking a breath.

Folding her legs, pointing her knees to the ceiling, she drags her hand down from her face to her naked abdomen. A sheen of sweat trickles down to her navel. Her heart pulses so violently, she feels dizzy.

She revisits the prior eight hours. In her purse is a fat wad of gil she earned with no effort. This thought causes her to sit straight up in her bed. The sheets peel from her back like a shedding layer of skin. The pill, for the most part, had worn off. She slept it off and sweated it out. She'd never do anything like that on a bluff again.

The last time she took to impressing a guy, he ended up dead. To his grave, Zack took her virginity and that healthy pink of skin that makes girls partial to romance.

Aerith stumbles towards her window, listening for Elmyra. The house is empty. Smells like stale breakfast Aerith had missed.

Love is an illness. She knows it is. It's her gift to know such things. She wrote a hundred letters to fix her insanity—protesting her innate ability to feel life too many miles away and not many centimeters too close.

She presses both palms against the cool window, leans her forehead against it too and stares out into the dirty streets of her neighborhood.

Reno sits heavy on her brain. He's the first man she's gone about impressing since Zack. Unfortunately, he wasn't all that that impressed with her goodness. She breathes against the window and draws an 'X' with her middle finger.

Cetra.

It means nothing if it can't save her.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Tseng won't be back for another week." Rude's voice fills up the men's restroom.

Reno unzips his pants. The cold air against his penis makes him shudder. Clearing his throat, he aims, and his piss thunders inside of the urinal.

"This is going to be the longest week of my goddamned life." Reno's grumble is guttural.

Rude waits for the last drip before speaking again. He watches Reno's back in the mirror. "It enhances that resume of yours nah?"

Reno refastens his pants, fights with the fly and tugs at it hard.

"Don't get me wrong, I love the shit we do, but that fucking Rufus...gets my dick in a twist every time he opens his mouth." Reno walks beside Rude, running his hands under the warm water. "I don't want Tseng's job."

Being second in command compliments his flaws. He gets all the perks of being a leader with barely half of Tseng's responsibility. The only shitty requirement is sifting through the endless paperwork and dealing with Tseng's horrible attitude. Rude thinks Reno hates anybody who threatens his masculinity— it's far from the truth. Reno just hates a man with unreadable eyes.

"You're such an underachiever for someone so capable." Rude hands Reno a paper towel to dry his hands. Reno snatches it up. Instead of dabbing away the water, he crumples it up in his hands. Rips it in half and tosses the wad into the sink.

"You're a capable son of a bitch too. Want my job? We can do the paperwork together." He's serious but Rude would never take him up on the offer.

Rufus has a reputation. They spent a month cleaning up the mess he made after a bad game of dominoes. It was the most blood Reno had seen in his life and he's made a lot of messes on his own. No one can say no to Rufus. Even when it came to human instinct to fight for your life.

If you can't bribe a journalist, the next best thing is to make them disappear.

"You can survive one more week." Rude laughs it off. It burns Reno up but he gulps his frustration down.

"Stop believing in me so much, Rude."

"Someone's gotta." Rude adjusts the cuffs of his sleeve.

Reno scratches his head. He doesn't want to think about the tight space they'd crammed the press into. Simply imagining the flashing lights of the cameras makes Reno sick to the stomach. He isn't an introvert but too much attention made him uncomfortable. It's an unnecessary fear of having all his weaknesses sniffed out. Like its a potent raw stench of onions that seeps from is skin. Reno spits into the garbage-can and they step into the hallway.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The flashing camera lights reflect tiny explosions in Rufus's shades. Breathing in, he shoves the dark frames up the bridge of his nose. His gold watch glistening as he lifts a shaky hand to calm the bustle. As though a spell had befallen the journalist (what he jokingly calls his bitchcraft), they hush their chaos a notch above a whisper. Reno and Rude stand beside him, equally as affected by his natural power. They stand straighter.

The ShinRa Electric Company plans to build another reactor in Wutai. As time has passed since the last AVALANCHE attack, the public has rifts in their opinion. Rufus inherited not only wealth, but a generation of peers that asked questions.

People are looking forward to progress. They protested. ShinRa can't kill a bunch of nameless nobodies with no capital, but they were a loud minority.

The cultural shift on top of his shameless exhibitions of his privilege incensed everyone. From his father at the tippy top of the totem pole, down to the most disgruntled SOLDIER.

"What a colossal fuck up he is..." Tseng had lastly said before departing to Wutai.

 **"Rufus ShinRa, do you know what the definition of an oligarchy is?** "

Of course he does. He attended the most elite private schools and graduated at the top of his class. He sure as hell didn't buy his GPA.

 **"A ShinRa owned facility collapsed and killed over one hundred underpaid Wutainese workers—how does that make you feel?"**

Honestly, Rufus doesn't feel anything but his bodyaches. He wipes his nose with a handkerchief and gives them the corporate answer.

"What happened to those workers is unfortunate. We are looking to investigate the cause of the collapse and to ensure that nothing similar happens to our employees again. That being said..." Rufus wipes the crust from eye, lightly lifts his shades, clearing his throat and then says, " Their wages have little to do with their well being. The economy in Wutai is flourishing by the way. How have you not heard?"

Rufus only cares about the business on a surface level. He does what his father, the President, asks of him.

 **"Mister ShinRa, don't you think you're a little bit detached?"**

Very much so, and he want's it to stay this way.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Afterwards, the crash begins to literally feel like he'd been jettisoned off the highest floor in the building. Rufus sits in the dark of his office for hours—Reno answers every phone call and makes up for each unanswered voicemail. He begins to appreciate Tseng a little more. When Rufus burned, everything around him went up into flames.

As Rufus unscrews the top of his 'cheap' wine bottle, he props a bare foot on the table and observes the space between his toes. He drinks cheap wine for the sake of irony.

"Tseng managed to convince that Junjie guy to meet with you." Reno drops the receiver, rubbing away the spasm in brow. Rufus makes a gargled noise of displeasure before sipping straight from the bottle.

"Can I trust you to be one hundred percent honest with me?" Rufus sits the bottle down on his desk with a light thumb.

"I ain't got a reason to lie to you, boss." Reno never knows which way the fire will roll, he just knows he's hot and sweaty.

"Am I losing this war?" Rufus unknots his neck tie. Shoots it over his desk into Reno's lap.

"What war?"

"The war with the people?"

"Since when has it mattered what the 'people' think?" Reno dead pans.

"You just answered my question." Rufus breaks into a thunder of laughs through his clenched teeth. He musses his damp hair and sprawls his fingers across his face.

"I mean, if you do, it's cool."

"Oh no, you're absolutely right. I don't give a shit but my superior cares too damn much about the optics. What's a few dead Wutainese going to damage? They war with themselves anyway..." Rufus wants to say that the building collapsing did them a favor. Less men their split government can use against each other.

"I ain't well versed in the politics involving you and your old man. I'm clearly just an overpaid secretary." Reno flops back in the chair. The phone rings again but he doesn't reach to answer. Rufus pauses for a moment. They both stare at the flashing red light on the phone.

Don wouldn't accept the bargain. Reno suggested that paperwork threw his 'type' off. In the slums, business isn't conducted with vague jargon. Don is rich but no crisp white button down rich.

And that damned building just had to collapse a few days before his birthday.

He chews at his cuticles anxiously. When the drugs wear off, he sees too clearly.

"I say don't worry about the shit that isn't in your control." Reno rubs the back of his neck.

"I need the people back on our side. If we aren't perceived as agreeable, AVALANCHE can exploit the disconnect." Rufus simply does not have the emotional capacity to endure another house arrest. "I need them to love me."

He loses Reno's sympathy at 'love'. It reminds him that Rufus is a weasel in a designer suit.

"Whatever you say." Reno throws up his hands.

"We need to pay our friend Don another visit. Instead of being polite about it, we are going to use our persuasion skills. Fuck the contract—from here on out, we are conducting business my way." Rufus points a finger at Reno and then taps his temple.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"The most eligible yet unavailable bachelor in Midgar." Pepper exhales a cloud of smoke as she reads the tabloid. She leans over the back of a cushioned chair and Aerith watches her through the mirror.

"The ShinRa dynasty has a net worth of 98.6 billion gil—Rufus ShinRa could wipe his ass with that and will still be one of the richest heirs on the globe." Pepper ad libs in a fake sophisticated voice.

The Honey Bees hum together. Aerith smears the last bit of gloss on her lips. She can't fathom having that kind of money.

"What a stingy motherfucker. He didn't even drop thirty grand last time he was here." Alicia scoffs as she applies black pasties on tiny nipples.

"That sounds like a personal problem." Pepper whips the creases out of the The Oracle and turns to the next page. Rufus ShinRa's face is pinned directly under a bold head line wearing shades. "Step your game up, Alicia."

Alicia takes it in stride. She shakes the curls in her hair and shoots hairspray into the air.

"He only sleeps with whores but exclusively dates models. Male and Female." Pepper continues.

"Does it really say that?" Sophie finishes dressing first. She's the most bee-like of them all. Blonde, busty, and eyes so blue that if you look long enough, you'd never need to see the sky again.

"Not in The Oracle, but it's common knowledge." Pepper finishes her cigarette.

Aerith fans away the hairspray mist, coughing into the crook of her arm.

"I'm more a of Sephiroth kind of girl anyway." Alicia flips her jet black hair.

"Only in your dreams." Sophie exits the dressing room, wafting the scent of cupcakes with her strut.

"It doesn't really matter how much money he has. It's not like he's sharing." Aerith is always the last to get dressed.

Pepper tosses The Oracle to the floor. "You're absolutely right, Aery."

"Could you really be happy with a man who holds a little bit more than half of the world's wealth? He's always unsatisfied when he leaves here—never in a million years. I will take the mailman any day." Aerith says it but she doesn't necessarily believe it. It's what you're supposed to say about unobtainable but nevertheless desirable circumstances.

"Says the girl who walked away with a thousand gil for doing fuck all." Alicia shimmies into her bee wings. "All you did was smile."

"That's what you call having a personality." Pepper prances around the room naked, still a step ahead of Aerith, who hasn't taken off her sun dress.

"You can't buy that at the store either." Aerith smiles up at Alicia, who leaves in a huff. Her heels stabbing the tile floor on her way out. Not sharp little clicks. Thundering taps that echo on the other side of the door.

The dressing room is stuffy with the scent of multiple perfumes and body lotions. Pepper lights another cigarette and leans back against the vanity. Aerith forces herself to avoid staring at her nipples.

"So whats your name going to be tonight?" She ashes her cigarette in a plastic cup of stale water. Aerith shakes her head lightly as she tugs the straps of her dress down.

"I haven't decided yet. I like Crystal...maybe Holiday." Aerith is the only Honey Bee who hasn't stuck with one name.

"No pressure. It's not like they remember it anyway." Pepper blows smoke from her nostrils. "You haven't been here long either."

"You're right. I just serve the drinks. My name is a star among thousands." Aerith rubs her upper body down in shimmering body oil.

"A star among thousands..." Pepper teases her with a vocal fry. "Don't they blow up and turn into black holes anyway."

"Yea. I think so, Pep." Aerith wonders if she could've been some kind of poet. The cosmos tells her—it's never too late to become who you ought to be. And she nods her head at the validation.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Do you still miss Cissnei?" Rude helps himself to Reno's last beer.

Reno lets the question hang in mid-air for a long time as he absently sifts through his collection of vinyls until he decides he doesn't want to listen to any music. Then he scratches his head before answering, "Yes."

Reno turns to look at Rude with a put-out expression. He sticks out his bottom lip with disgust, grinding his teeth together.

"You just never talk about her." Rude twists the cap off the bottle.

"Some people are just too good for you and nothing else needs to be said." Cissnei was the love of his life. Reno didn't want to relive not being good enough. She was right the whole time.

"Well, I miss her too. I think about her a lot." Rude's lips wrinkle after his first swig, like he had forgotten what beer tasted like.

Reno thinks about her all the time. She occupies the dark corners in his bedroom, the coldness of pillows, the sink filled with dishes...

Cissnei is everywhere. In the face of every conventionally attractive women he interacts with, Cissnei blinks back at him. She's an epidemic. Kills every good feeling he manages to squeeze out of life.

"She was my friend too."

"Then go out there and fucking find her, Rude...Nothing is stopping you." Just leave her where she's at. Don't bring her here.

.

.

.

.

.


	3. Tapeworm

**"I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ"~ Anais Nin**

.

.

.

.

.

.

He needs the good folk of Midgar to love him. It's all Rufus can think about at four o'clock in the morning. His reputation hasn't been up to his father's standards as of late. The press isn't necessarily wrong in their criticisms. He is spoiled, but not in the way people presume him to be. Most wouldn't believe it but it is possible to quite literally own the entire planet and be miserable. He too is oppressed.

Scarlet observes a tear in her stocking. They'd both been a little too rough.

"What are you thinking so hard about?" She slides her pale legs into the stockings anyway.

Rufus has been absently staring at the streaks of light on his ceiling, an unlit cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. He sinks into the thread count of his sheets.

"Be honest with me." The cigarette wobbles.

"Sure." Scarlet stands to shimmy the stockings up her pale thighs. Her ass is shaped like an upside down heart. Rufus thinks its her nicest attribute for a woman of her age.

"How should I win the people over?"

Scarlet doesn't take him seriously right away. She moves a step back from the bed and gapes at him disbelievingly.

"Are you serious?" Her disheveled hair ghosts around her perfect angular face.

"Dead serious." He lifts himself from his pillows, twisting on his side to grab his lighter off the nightstand.

Scarlet crosses her arms over her bare chest and proceeds to pace around, looking for the rest of her clothes.

"Well..." She starts but Rufus cuts her off.

"What makes a man endearing?"

"Oh, Rufus...it's the exact opposite of what you are." Scarlet untangles her bra from the doorknob.

"Elaborate, Ma'am." Rufus kicks the covers back with his leg, his erection still persistent.

"Sincerity. Candidness. A sophisticated kind of vulnerability. That alone, rich or poor, makes a man likable." Scarlet hooks her bra around her torso.

"You think I'm insincere?" Rufus finally lights the cigarette.

"I think you talk too much." She slides her arms in the straps.

"Be more candid...I see, but that still doesn't answer my question." He inhales.

"What is your question again?" Scarlet finds her earrings.

"How do I win the people over?"

She slides her jade earrings in her ears, watching herself in the tall mirror. Before answering, she licks her lips and looks at him over a shoulder.

"Fall in love or pretend to? Get married? Hell if I know." Scarlet bends down for her dress.

"Marriage..." Rufus breathes out a cloud of smoke, pinching his lips together.

"Love fixes all things, so they say. Love wins." Scarlet's idea is surprisingly brilliant. Rufus swings his legs out of the bed and rushes towards her. As she tugs her black dress over her head, Rufus grabs her slender arms, almost burning her with his cigarette.

While she is frozen in place, Rufus gets down on one knee. High, drunk, angry, and excited. His bloodshot eyes shimmer with certainty.

"Marry me." He doesn't ask.

Scarlet slaps him across the face with the back of her hand.

.

.

.

.

And so Rufus challenges himself to a quest for love. Whether it be temporary or entirely fraudulent. However, it can't just be with anyone. His intuition tells him that it has to be a woman. A pretty ingenue who doesn't run in the circle of Midgar's elite. Like in the movies, a devastatingly beautiful girl from the bottom of the barrel.

He pays closer attention to the handful of interns. No. None of them fit the bill. The front desk receptionist on the main lobby floor? Nope. Too cliche. Too close to his circle and she's a known gossip.

Rufus storms off the elevator for the meeting he is running fifteen minutes late to.

He swings open the door to the conference room. At the very top of table, sits his father. Big Daddy ShinRa.

"Mr. President, forgive my tardiness." Rufus floats to the closest empty chair between Reeve and Reno. Scarlet sits across from him with shiny eyes, like they hadn't been up all night fucking and drinking.

"We barely got started." Heidegger slurps from a tall coffee cup.

President ShinRa has gotten better about hiding his disgust. He can't be disappointed in his son. After all, he did raise Rufus motherless. Rufus wonders if he would've turned out differently if he were nurtured properly.

Where they had left off in the conversation, they pick it back up and talk around Rufus. Reno is silent along with him. His input is of no importance to them—it's only imperative that he absorbs the information in Tseng's absence.

"So Don is unwilling to cooperate?" Heidegger directly asks of Rufus.

"You had one job, Rufus. If you can't charm an uneducated slum rat, you're not much of a media 'darling' after all." Scarlet's red lips crack into a smile.

"It's not my fault that our methods of handling business don't exactly fly with men of his stature. I think, and Reno agrees with me, that you're all just old and detached from common folk." Rufus claps a hand on Reno's back.

Reno had imparted this wisdom onto his superior.

"I'm just a fly on the wall." Reno drops the fountain pen he'd been twirling in his fingers.

"Don't minimize your role at the table, Friendo." Rufus squeezes Reno's shoulder and gives him a hard shake. "Speak your mind."

Reno is at a loss for words. Everyone stares at him with anticipation. The tension thickens.

"All I gotta say is this—we need to get on Don's level. Speak his language and meet him half way." Reno swallows a wad of spit and clears his throat.

"What language does he speak?" President ShinRa's the kind of person you can't make eye contact with for too long. Rufus takes after his father's intensity. Reno hopes it doesn't makes him any less manly for not being able to hold up his own—something about ShinRa just scrambles his mind.

"Violence." Reno rubs the side of his face.

"Barbarity is deeply ingrained in our DNA. It shouldn't be too hard to acclimate to." Rufus nods at his own certainty. "We will try again. Minus the bureaucratic bullshit."

.

.

.

.

Reno figures that life isn't all about finding happiness. For him, it's been a constant struggle of learning how to live without it. The meeting sort of leaves him with a soulless feeling.

"Nine o'clock tonight." Rufus gives his shoulder one last hard squeeze before leaving Reno alone in the sleek conference room. Scarlet's strong perfume lingers. Heidegger's coffee cup left a ring on the table.

The corporate world is exhausting. He unbuttons the cuff of his sleeve and turns his wrists to stretch. President ShinRa left the room under the assumption that Rufus would take the less chaotic route in handling Don's demands for more money. That firm shoulder grab told a different story.

Reno's phone beeps. He slides it out of his back pocket. Tseng's name flashes on the screen. Four rings, Reno doesn't answer. He just sits his phone on the table. Midgar's bright gray sky filters through the ceiling length windows.

He gets a bad feeling in his gut and begins to sweat.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Aerith starts her shift early. She and Elmyra had gotten into a disagreement about the 'wrong' way to wash a fork. Sometimes, Elmyra kicks her out but the threat never has any weight to it. Aerith is infuriating, thinks with her heart, attacks with her mouth, but if anything terrible were to happen to her, Elmyra wouldn't be able to survive it.

Love is disgusting brain chemistry.

High ponytail sweeping at her hips, she makes her rounds as a bottle girl. Aerith can't shake a nagging in the back of her head. Something bad is about to happen. She accepts a tip from a regular and smiles but her head pounds so hard, she can feel it in her throat. Her ears pop.

Something bad is about to happen to her, but she can't quit. She's fears not making ends meet more than she does divine intuition.

Nine o'clock quickly becomes midnight. A man grabs her ass but still, she needs all the gil she can get. That same hand slides a gil in the strap of her garter.

By 12:15 p.m. the Honey Bee Inn is rowdy with the usuals. The same faces gamble at the same tables and flirt with the same unobtainable girls who'd never so much as glance at them on the street.

Aerith used to think that only lonely men came to the Honey Bee Inn, but it was the exact opposite. Some of them are socially inept. The vast majority of them are as regular as the mailman.

"Quit your job. Let me take care of you."

"What does your father have to say?"

"Are you married? You're too pretty to be stuck here." This one offends her the most. She made the choice to be here...she can leave whenever she wants.

Aerith hears it all every night and has quickly adapted to it. If she never had a sense of humor before, she definitely has one now. Laughs until she can't feel anything.

12:30 p.m. happens and Rufus ShinRa makes an appearance. Aerith thinks it's strange that he isn't already drunk. Her mouth waters at the sight of Reno. Compelled by a sudden wash of anxiety, her ears ring and she spills someone's drink on the bar top. Pepper fusses at her but Aerith can't hear beyond the shrillness of her migraine. Through her blurring vision, she watches Don welcome Rufus and his Turk with theatrical hospitality. A film of cigarette smoke floats around their bodies.

Pepper keeps talking to Aerith loudly. The pressure building up in her ears feels like she's drowning under water. Don's bodyguards form a half circle, blocking his body from Aerith's view. The glitter of four Honey Bees swarm Rufus ShinRa. Don nods his head enthralled by the one sided conversation.

The lights in Aerith's head go dark. She always imagined that the worst way to die is not being able to breathe. Her last thought before collapsing is how terrible it is that she never had the opportunity to learn how to swim—doing so might've saved her the panic of not breathing. She drops into a dead faint, hitting her head along the way.

But the pain is merely a dim spark in the darkness of her consciousness.

.

.

.

.

Don's office is a world different than the rest of the Honey Bee Inn. It's a poor man's interpretation of affluence. Like the rest of the walls, the room is red but the gaudy sophistication makes the corner of Reno's mouth twitch. On the upper-plate, they called Don 'new money'.

Rufus, with his foot propped on a knee, waits for Don to get comfortable in his big desk chair. The leather relaxes when Don reclines back into its plushness.

"The President doesn't want to increase your allowance." Rufus says. The fake politeness had finally been laid to rest. Reno's grip on the handle of his EMR tightens.

"I'm no rat, Rufus. I'm not interested in sharing where I get my secrets. They don't make deals with you." Don uses a match to light a cigarette. "You don't share with me all of your 'intelligence'."

There's a strained silence. Noise comes from the other side of the door, but it feels so far away. Rufus rubs his chin, gets a look of thoughtfulness before deeply sighing. His chest rises and falls.

"See, here is your mistake, Don. You think you have capital over me." Rufus says as though he'd just discovered this fact himself.

"You might have more money but I've got more friends. The people out there..." Don points in the direction of the door "...those people respect me. They need me. I've generated more wealth down here than you folks have bothered to care. Who helped the man open the liquor store across the street...me."

Don licks the sweat from his lips before taking a long drag of his cigarette. Consternation pinches the space between his eyebrows.

An unaffected Rufus sits up in his seat. Dropping his foot back on onto the floor, Rufus knits his fingers together and rests them on the black desk.

"Whose name is on the water towers?" Rufus's voice is low. He doesn't blink waiting for Don to answer.

Don coughs. He breathes raggedly like he's dying on the inside.

"I own the water you drink and the air you breathe, Don." Rufus frowns so hard his face darkens. Reno swills the spit collecting under his tongue.

"What do you own in comparison? Friends? Friends will turn on you if the price is right. So tell me, aside from a few thousand gil and this dump you call a whore house—there are much better ones with prettier girls on top, tell me what the fuck do you own with your name on it? I will wait." Rufus falls back in the chair and folds his arms.

Reno is interested to hear Don's case. It begins to look like he doesn't have one. This meeting is actually going a lot better than Reno had anticipated. No one is dead and that in and of itself is a success story for Rufus ShinRa.

"Listen, Junior..." Don crack his knuckles. The rings on his fingers sparkle under the flickering light fixture.

"ShinRa." Rufus scathingly corrects him. "If you're such a 'do good' in your shit smelling community, then think about this—if you're dead who will they have? Who is next after you?"

Don doesn't answer.

"If you're the shining beckon of hope in the slums, then what are the slums without you?"

Reno understand's Don's way of thinking. The wealth gap might as well be a black hole. There is no hope for people in the slums. Reno managed to end his poverty cycle but it wasn't through hard work and determination. He's an ex-con who just so happened to have a talent that the Turks needed. Don glares at Rufus with enough hatred to put out the sun. Reno hates Rufus too but once he came to terms with his place in life, all the bullshit ceased to faze him.

"Fine. You don't need the money, but keep this in mind. You're indirectly working with AVALANCHE when you are stingy with the information. My next course of action is to kill you and raze this money pit you think is community service." Rufus is too collected when he's sober.

Don's bodyguards bristle at the threat.

"But it doesn't have to be that way." Reno interjects, surprising Rufus. "Do what he says, Corneo."

"I will give you three days to decide your fate." Rufus stands up. The bodyguards hold up their guns but they are faced with a terrible dilemma: correct the disrespect done to their boss or deal with the consequence of assaulting a ShinRa?

"I want a room for tonight, some pills too if you've got any. I'm sure you do." Rufus smiles.

"Get 'em a key to a room." Don seems to have already made up his mind, but doesn't speak it. He waves a dismissive hand at his flunkies, sweating profusely.

Reno swears under his breath. He's going to have to be awake for as long as Rufus 'sleeps'.

.

.

.

.

Aerith can't remember her dream as she awakes. Whatever it had been about, it drenched her body in sweat. She gasps for air like she'd been brought back from the dead. Through the bed canopy, her eyes focus on the pretty chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Each plastic crystal spots her vision with tiny orbs of rainbow light.

Lifting her head from the silk pillows, she rolls back the covers. The sheets are also silk and sticking to her bare legs—no wonder she is so hot. Pepper must've unhooked her garter and taken off her shoes. Pepper is the last person Aerith remembers standing next to.

She brings her knees to her chest, hiding her face in the crooks of her arms. That sense of dread is gone but she hates appearing fragile. The fact that her body had been left up to the determination of strangers makes her sick. She doesn't think Pepper or any of the girls would do anything to spite her. She isn't competition. There's just always a possibility that someone doesn't mean her well.

Danger is always at the forefront of her thoughts.

She can't feel sorry for herself—theres not time in the world for it. Aerith gets out of the large bed, brushing back the sheer fabric of the canopy. The furniture is cheap but the room looks exquisite by slum standards. Pink, red, and gold plated objects. On the dresser, Pepper had neatly rolled Aerith's tip money in a rubber band. It lessens her anxiety. She's assuming it's Peppers doing.

Aerith opens the drawer, there's nothing inside of it but an unused condom.

It occurs to her that this is one of the rooms where some of the Bees make the bulk of their gil. Aerith closes the drawer with an elbow. Her skin crawls. How long had those sheets gone without being washed?

Her bee wings and pantyhose are thrown on the back of a chair in front of an oval floor mirror. From a distance, her reflection looks back at her like a child out of their realm of understanding. The doorknob clicks and Aerith's stomach does a back flip.

Rufus steps inside of the room with a whiskey bottle from behind the bar. He doesn't notice Aerith at first. His brain isn't good at juggling multiple feelings at once. The moment they make eye contact, a strange sense of shame crosses him, like he'd been caught in the middle of his self-reflecting. Aerith's first instinct is to cover herself. She doesn't know why. Maybe it's the lack of shoes on her feet.

He opens his mouth to speak but he doesn't know what to say. She'd completely caught him off guard as well. So, he decides to just smile, locking the door behind him. He wanted a room to sleep. Sex wasn't on his mind. Sitting the bottle down on the vanity, he comes out of his white coat.

"How are you?" His voice is hoarse.

"Good." Aerith nods her head. Her hair had fallen out of the ponytail. The sleek curls now stand as fly-aways around her face.

Rufus sits down in the vanity chair. The key to the door dangles from his index finger.

"I wasn't expecting you to be here." He says too conversationally. Aerith wonders if he remembers their last interaction. Rufus squints like he does but it just so happens to be with the same cat eyes in all of his photos. This relieves her. So she wasn't being set up.

Aerith doesn't have a clever response. Her head is still foggy.

"Take off my shoes." He lifts a leg.

She gapes at his foot then looks him square in the face like he had just told her that the world is ending.

He lowers his foot an inch above the floor and quirks a brow. Waiting.

She drops her arms from her chest. Before she can move a leg, Rufus tells her, very politely, "Crawl."

And she does. There is no other option. She might hate her circumstance but she values her life more. Sprawling her fingers against the floor, Aerith drags her knees towards his feet. Her hair hides the red bursting on her cheeks. When she reaches his foot, she clasps her thin fingers around his shoe. Real leather is so smooth.

Aerith gently slips off his left shoe then his right. Rufus leans forward to removed his dress socks, but only to get a better look at her face.

"Thank you." He says dryly.

If he were a different man, she might've enjoyed choking on his expensive cologne.

"You've got pretty toes." Aerith says without emotion. His bare feet are nice. Smooth looking.

Screwing the cap off, Rufus hums a laugh inside the bottle. Sucks it down like it's water.

"Thank you." Again, this time he smacks his lips. "I've never been told that before."

"That surprises me, sir. I figure you've heard every nice thing there is to say about a handsome rich man." Aerith wants to hook her bra but something tells her to leave it be. One strap falls over her shoulder and the cups dangle away from her chest.

He finds her statement especially humorous. He's heard every possible bad thing but not good things.

"I'm wealthy. Not rich." Rufus takes another drink, dropping the key onto the floor.

"There's a difference?" She tilts her head to the side.

"Yes. Don Corneo is rich. His money is time sensitive. My money is forever." Rufus doesn't seem to be bragging. He's very matter-of-fact.

"Ain't a thing wrong with that." Aerith laughs.

"Not at all." Rufus looks down at her lowered head.

They stay like this for a while. The sounds of 2:00 a.m. rumbled beneath them. Around them. The later it gets, the more alive the Honey Bee Inn becomes.

Rufus gets bored of her avoidance. He brings a hand down and lifts Aerith's face by her cheeks. His thumb pressing under her jaw bone.

"If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?" Rufus has always wanted to ask a Honey Bee this. He just hasn't gotten around to doing so. He prefers them over proper escorts on the upper-plate. They don't tell secrets is why.

Aerith doesn't have to think about it. She wishes an awful damn lot. None of it ever comes true.

"Freedom." Her eyes water.

It's not what Rufus thought she'd say. His eyes lighten with amusement.

"That's vague." He encourages her.

"Not really. I think it's vey specific." She drawls.

"Be free of what?" He lets go of her face and slumps back.

"All of this. Everything. The physical and the spiritual." Aerith's feet begin to hurt after sitting on them for so long.

"What's stopping you?"

She just shrugs. Rufus puts the bottle of whiskey down.

"Stand up." He tells her. She gets off the floor.

His eyes roam her soft skin. Not in a lustful way though. Aerith can't figure out the exactness of his expression. Some men can only see through women, like they are ghost or people only made of thin paper. She gets a sense that Rufus sees that she is a person. As odd as it might be. Even if that weren't the case, she rather believe it.

She becomes hyper aware of her thighs and her stomach rolling as she breathes.

He gets up from the chair, towering over her.

"Undress me." He commands softly.

She doesn't hesitate. Aerith slides her hands under his suit jacket and peels it off. She startles herself with her eagerness to please him. Desperation is what she wishes to be free of. Always, she is desperate and anxious.

Aerith loosens his black tie and it slithers to the floor. Rufus hiccups. She watches his Adam's apple bob when he swallows. He's just a man. This shouldn't intimidate her. She starts unbuttoning his white shirt. At first, too hastily so she slows down. The texture of the fabric feels like its worth more than her soul.

Rufus ShinRa is undeniably beautiful in the face. Aerith isn't prepared for the sharp ridges of muscle under his shirt. Her hands stop at the second to last button. A happy trail, darker blonde than his hair, vanishes under his belt buckle. Catching herself, she finishes the task and Rufus comes out of his shirt.

They make eye contact before Aerith brushes her fingers over his belt. His face is unreadable.

She busies herself with unhooking the strap. Rufus surprises her when he presses his nose into her scalp. He moves so close her lips press against the center of his chest. He breathes in her hair, loudly. Cupping the back her neck with his hand. Aerith loosens the belt and works towards the fly of his pants.

"How much?" He mumbles against her sweaty curls. She figures out that he doesn't remember her at all. It bruises her ego a bit.

"I'm worth the whole sky." Her warm breath disperses against his skin.

Rufus grabs her hand and presses it against his growing erection.

"Sold." He tightens his hold.

"You can't buy the sky. It's priceless." Aerith's heart pounds. Intimacy with a stranger, she thought herself capable of it, now she isn't so sure.

"I own the sky." He whispers, guiding her hand under the band of his underwear.

She doesn't argue with him. By her philosophy, Rufus ShinRa doesn't own a damn thing. People just decided to let him believe it for so many years. You can't own what's been here before the start of mankind and mankind's ideas.

"Is the sky supposed to be a metaphor for your freedom?" He drags her head back by her hair so that she can face him. Her feelings are hurt. She can finally see all the meanness he is capable of.

"You can have it." He murders her spirit with the slow dip of his lashes.

"Mister ShinRa, I'm not partial to your sense humor." Aerith doesn't think he's being genuine but he is.

"I'm not joking." Rufus means it with every cell in his body. He thinks to himself—this girl will be my remedy. All because she told him that she likes his toes.

Rufus unfolds his erection from his pants. The tip grazes Aerith's stomach. Her breathing hitches.

"I want you to lay down." He pulls his belt out the loops of his pants.

Aerith is compelled to listen. She steps back until her legs touch the bed. Slinking her arms out of her bra, she sits on the mattress. Rufus follows her path and Aerith falls back when he closes the gap between them.

Rufus crawls on top of her. There isn't a shred of doubt in his mind that she is exactly what he needs. The way her hair pools around her face solidifies this belief. There's many beautiful women in the world, but she is an effortless type of gorgeous. And it's obvious that she is aware of this truth about herself. Her eyes fill up with a cat's curiosity.

If he had less a sound of mind, he would taste her mouth. Rufus grabs her chin, turning her face left and right. With his thumb, he drags down her bottom lip. Her bottom row of teeth are crooked. One of her canines turns inwardly. Her lips collapse around his thumb. The tip of her tongue grazes his fingernail.

Reno stands outside the door, continuously checking the time on his watch. He's the dead kind of tired that makes your head hurt. Had he known he was going to be involved in another all nighter, he wouldn't have stayed up so late. The back of his eyes pulsate. Damn, he thinks—maybe killing Don would've made for a better evening. A Honey Bee makes her way down the hall with glass of water. Her steps are quick as she's heading in Reno's direction. Horror ripples across her face...not disgust...mortification? She quickens on him and reaches for the door knob.

"Slow your roll, Miss Lady." He holds out his EMR but this Bee has determination burning in her eyes. She puckers her lips, furiously shaking a head at him. The water sloshes in the glass.

"One of my girls is on the other side of that door. She wasn't feeling too good—now get the hell out of my way. I'm not scared of you." Reno believes her. He raises his eyebrows and his lips twitch into a smile.

"You should be scared of me. Ain't nobody gonna miss a Honey Bee." He laughs.

"You're not wrong. I don't got much to lose, but I don't think ShinRa could stand another scandal. Breaking news—Baby ShinRa rapes an unconscious girl. Exploits the poor to satisfy his dirty kinks. They'd eat it up." For someone wearing ridiculously fake eyelashes, she takes herself a great deal seriously.

"Who the hell is going to believe you?" Reno hangs his head to the side.

"Just let me in!" She stomps her foot.

Reno thinks about it. He looks up and down the hallway. There hasn't been noise coming from inside the room. Rufus isn't a modest person when it comes to his late night excursions. He's not a rapist but he is definitely unpredictable.

He doesn't argue with the Honey Bee. Sees no point in her lying about it. Her twisted facial expression is believable. Reno slowly nods his head and steps aside, The Honey Bee pulls a key from her lacy bra and jiggles it in the lock.

Pepper shoves herself inside, Reno stands behind her.

Aerith looks before Rufus does. Her skin flushes. Not wanting to mar her reputation as a bottle girl, she attempts to slink away from Rufus but he straddles her.

Rufus's bare ass sitting above his pants is the last image Reno wanted burned into memory. He hisses a soft 'god damnit' under his breath.

"What's this about, Reno?" Rufus stares at Pepper.

"She said she was unconscious." Reno isn't a liar but he also doesn't apologize for anything.

Pepper experiences two emotions at once. She is relieved but also embarrassed. Not giving herself a moment to be excused, she removes herself, shoving past Reno.

"No idea..." Reno holds up his hands. He gives Aerith a glance that lasts for too long.

"Clearly, she's not unconscious." Rufus snorts.

"Clearly."

After a torturous pause, Reno attempts to dismiss himself but Rufus demands him to stay.

"I need your opinion." Rufus gets off of Aerith. The bed-springs groan. She sits up from the depression in the sheets.

It takes a lot of Reno's strength to ignore his free-will. He shuts the door, traps himself inside of this hot ass room. The humidity worsens the cheap floral smell.

"I'm always honest with ya, boss." Reno makes a fist with his free hand.

Rufus snatches the bottle of whiskey off the floor with his fly hanging open. Reno clenches his jaws.

"What do you think?" Rufus takes a drink. The alcohol makes his spine tingle.

"What do I think about what?" Reno frowns and it deepens the lines around his mouth.

"About her?" Rufus nods his head in Aerith's direction.

Reno catches her staring at him. He remembers the big game she talked. Her very certain languor and confidence—she's a completely different person now, but he is too in the presence of a ShinRa.

"What do you want me to think?" Reno thinks she's a pretty girl but it doesn't need to be said. If Rufus didn't think so, she'd have clothes on and this situation would not have occurred.

"Does she possess a face for TV?" Rufus sidles back towards the bed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I guess, boss."

"Let me express my train of thought—the idea came to me this morning. As I was dressing myself, I thought about my awful relationship with the media these past few years." Rufus wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I kept wondering what it would take to get them back on my side. How am I going to generate positive gossip around me, my persona. Well..."

Reno hangs on the cliff of that well. Rufus takes his time organizing his slow drunk thoughts. The pit of his stomach burns a good feeling. He reaches down and pinches Aerith's nipple.

"It came to me with profound clarity. I need a wife." Rufus falls down onto the bed, wrapping a strong arm around Aerith's small body. He sits the bottle between his legs and squishes her checks with his large hand, pressing their faces together.

"A wife, yea?" Reno flares his nostrils.

"Can you see it?" Rufus lands a chaste kiss on her forehead, her hair tickling all of his face.

Reno doesn't believe there's a single thing in the world Rufus can't have. What do you say to a man who has never been told **no**?

.

.

.

.

.

.


	4. Porcelain-Hard

**"She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her." ~ Zora Neale Hurston**

.

.

.

.

.

 **Who is Aerith Gainsborough?**

Well, Aerith Gainsborough decidedly is an unsatisfied shell of a person. Aerith Gainsborough has daydreamed a life opposite of her reality from the time she could shape thoughts into abstract ideas. The very moment in her childhood when she saw her reflection for the first time. That is a very specific memory and she often wonders if it's a lie she has convinced herself to believe to placate her trauma.

"What is your name?" Rufus ShinRa loudly whispers against the curve of her ear. He draws in the smell of her skin. Thinking she smells like a cheap bar of soap, Aerith blushes—she doesn't have a fake name having spent so much of her time consumed with the weight of her given one.

From the vanity chair, Reno restlessly wiggles his foot on heel of his boot. Like Rufus he waits for some kind of sound to leave her mouth. He hides his mouth behind his knuckles.

"Ava." Aerith stares at the center of Reno's forehead, no longer willing to look him in his eyes.

Rufus pulls away from Aerith, sweeping his eyes down the side of her glittery face. He repeats Ava three times, tasting it in his mouth like a sugary piece of candy.

"Rufus. Ava." Reno rolls his mirth against the back of his hand.

With a softer erection, Rufus gets down on his knees, between her legs. He sits the bottle down, glide his white fingers under her thighs. An explosion sets off in her chest.

"Ava, will you marry me?" Rufus is at a comfortable happy drunkenness. No word slurring. His skin is flushed but he gazes at her with determination. She gets the feeling that she has no other choice. As if Reno could save her, she glares at him.

Reno chews at his cuticles, visibly unmoved. He does admire the full tear-drop shape of her breasts.

"Mister ShinRa, a part of me wants to decline, just cos you've never been told you can't have something but..."

"I'm giving you the sky." Rufus cuts her off.

"The sky is scary and big. What if it eats me whole?" Aerith asks sincerely.

"It won't." Rufus has never been so enamored with a person before. Is it the simplicity of not having a pot to piss in? No, he's talked with the other Honey Bees, but none have ever complimented his toes.

Aerith gazes at Reno again who turns away this time. He hangs his head to the side and grits his teeth.

"You promise me that and I absolutely will marry you." She brings her attention back down to Rufus. Runs her fingers through the fullness of his neatly cut hair, brushing back the strands above his brow.

"I promise." He seals her fate.

There's an awkward silence, like the air has stopped circulating through the room. Rufus raises himself to pin her down with a very real kiss. It causes her to become acutely aware of how hot her body is, still sweaty from that forgotten bad dream. Rufus doesn't kiss her passionately—its the most impersonal lip lock she's ever experienced. Shockingly, it doesn't make her any less overwhelmed and dizzy. It only lasts long enough until she's completely under his shadow. Rufus tugs down down her panties and Aerith lets out an breathy noise. She's only had one person to compare this to and that was Zack. Her curiosity supersedes her common sense.

Reno gets up so quick the chair screeches against the floor, almost tumbling backwards.

"Reno, I need you to stay so that we can properly consummate this union! " Rufus looks over his shoulder.

"You don't fucking pay me enough!" Reno's face is red...with what Rufus can only figure is humiliation. His lips stretch into a wide, toothy smile. He laughs. His stomach flutters against Aerith's.

"I do pay you fucking enough!" Rufus's amusement quickly turns into ire.

"No." Reno matches the acerbity of Rufus's tone. A notch higher.

Rufus sits up on his knees, straddling Aerith with the pressure of his hips.

"Fuck you." Is the note Reno ends it on. He removes himself from all of it.

The door slams shut and Rufus melts into a puddle of amusement beside Aerith. With his penis straight in the air, he cackles so hard, tears swell up in his eyes. Rufus is rubicund from his ears to his shoulders.

"What a fucking dumbass!" He manages to squeeze out of his stomach. Rolling to the side of the bed, he grips the neck of the bottle and throws his head back, washing down his dry laughter. Rufus chokes a little. A trail of saliva and liquor slithers down his chin.

"Ava?" He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. His wet eyelashes stick together. The richest man in the world sits beside her, somewhat vulnerable with his pants unbuttoned and shirtless. Every bad thing she's heard, read about him unravels like a reel of film in her mind. The parties. His affairs. That guesstimated net worth. No one really knows how much money ShinRa has stolen.

"Yes, sir." Aerith has already acclimated to her lie. She doesn't necessarily become a different person. It actually feels opposite to getting to know a stranger. A thing in her awakens. She's known Ava all along, there just hasn't been a good time for them to finally meet.

"My birthday is this weekend." Rufus utters with fleeting malaise. He isn't the type to feel sorry for himself.

"How old are ya turning?" Aerith curls her toes, craning her neck against the pillow to gaze up at him.

"Thirty three." He replies distantly.

"Whatcha gonna do for your born day?"

Rufus clears his throat, resting the almost empty bottle on the nightstand. He glares back at her and his lips slowly break into a smile.

"What kind of wedding do you want?" He changes the subject, lowering himself back against the pillows.

"The kind you wear a big white dress to. A long veil like a river." Aerith climbs on top of him in one smooth sweep of her thighs.

"All of them are like that." His voice rattles. "Each one that I've been invited to, they all look just like that."

"Mister ShinRa, are you playing with my feelings?" Aerith can taste freedom, feels it all over her body. Her skin becomes gooseflesh.

"I never say what I don't mean." Rufus inhales sharply. His chest rises.

"Since I'm your fiancée, it is only fair that I share my thoughts...right?"

"I want to hear your thoughts. Yes."

"I don't want you to change your mind and make me feel stupid."

"You like my toes. I have no reason to change my mind." Rufus says with all the clarity in the world. He doesn't gaze at her like a man in love. He shouldn't because he isn't in love with her yet, but he starts to look a lot less like the untouchable man on the front pages.

Aerith watches the most powerful man in the world drift to sleep. One man, with a body so small in comparison to the mountains and stretches of ocean. She lifts her index finger, gently pressing it against the tip of his nose. The cartilage folds to the side. Tiny hairs line the inside of his nostril. Rufus doesn't stir. Doesn't snore. If she couldn't feel his warm breathing against her finger, she might've thought his liver had given out after years of abuse.

It isn't in Aerith's best interest to take up Rufus on his offer. After all, she is a wanted person, but there will never been an opportunity like this in her life again. And her life has been going at a very sluggish pace to absolutely nowhere. Fear? Sure, she can deal with a little bit of horror from the unknown.

.

.

.

Reno actually answers the phone this time when Tseng calls. At 4:45 a.m. the Honey Bee Inn falls into a lazy quietude. Every now and then, Reno can hear a voice from a room, but it's barely a whisper. Like a haunting, you think it's there but it could very well be your imagination.

"Hello." Reno talks lowly but the sound of his voice filters down the hall.

"You're up unusually early." Tseng has this specific way of speaking, completely unique to him. Every conversation feels transactional. Veld used to always say that it's because Tseng cannot find the perfect balance between duty and his trauma. Reno just thinks he's boring and stuffy. Tseng may have secrets, but Reno has a fuck-ton of them too. His past hasn't stifled his personality.

"Clearly, the time of day doesn't matter to you in the first god-damned place. Don't act like you care about my unhealthy habits." Reno sits on the floor with his back against the wall.

"Believe it or not, being concerned for your health is in my job description." Tseng coughs in Reno's ear.

Dead silence. Reno sucks up the drainage in his nose.

"How is Rufus?"

"A mess. Like always. I should be tailing terrorist, not baby-sitting a grown ass man."

"It's not baby-sitting. You're serving as his counsel."

"Well, the organization is fucked if I'm delegated as most rational." Reno is so tired, pressures balloons inside of his skull. He rubs at his pulsating eyes. His silver bracelet slides down his arm. He frowns.

"You complain a lot." Tseng says sharply.

Reno hesitates—Tseng is always quick with his remarks but Reno is never prepared for them. He always thinks he is but Tseng has perfect timing. He isn't wrong though. Reno has a lot to bitch about.

"Have you read that new piece on Rufus yet?" Tseng cooly changes the subject.

"In The Oracle? Yea—a bit too biased for me." Reno sniffs. The Oracle is on ShinRa's payroll.

"No. Not that one. Remember that interview he did three months ago? Red Star Journal finally published it..." Tseng pauses. Reno listens to him shuffle around papers on a desk somewhere in Wutai.

"Imagine this. You're having a coffee with the most powerful man on the goddamned planet. He doesn't ask you about your life. Doesn't ask about the weather. The sky is always gray. Rufus ShinRa is the dictionary definition of charming. He looks at you like you're the only person in the room who matters—" Tseng pauses his reading to take a sip of something. Reno grimaces.

"But that glamour is superficial. When I asked the boy prince how he felt about the growing wage gap between the rich and poor, he loses his clever charm. One cannot fake altruism. For the most part, Rufus ShinRa is an honest person. The pomp of his elegance is very real. He'd be better off if he could fake goodwill and tenderness..." Tseng stops.

Reno waits for him to say more. When the silence becomes too heavy, Reno says, "Tell us something we don't know. Sheesh."

Tseng starts speaking but the door cracks open. Reno doesn't jump. He pulls his head away from the phone and squints at the shadow not belonging to Rufus. Thin legs, erect nipples and a not quite somber expression, but not exactly at peace, Aerith walks out of the faint glow of the room clutching her heels, bra thrown over her shoulder, dragging her wings. When she closes the door, shutting out the light behind her, the sudden weight of the darkness startles Reno.

For a minute, she allows her heart to waffle on what it truly means to keep one's integrity. The urge to cry overwhelms her but it doesn't last long. The pain in her throat rises and deflates back into her chest.

Tseng says Reno's name four times before he hangs up in his face.

"Reno, do ya know what quixotic means?" Aerith licks her lips. Reno feels a certain way about her remembering his name. It could be that part of him that knows what it's like to hold a grudge—the wicked man that he keeps out of practice.

A voice piercing the darkness. He's read variations of this line in many stories, but never could understand what that could possibly sound like. He learns now.

"Nah." Reno stands up and slides the phone in the pocket of his suit jacket. "Are you gonna tell me?"

"It means unrealistic. Impossible romance. Something like that. Saw it in The Oracle, thought it sound good. Perfectly applies to this..." She gestures at the invisible burden of existing, attempting to grasp for something but her hands are already full with her painful looking shoes.

"Nice." Reno's phone lights up inside of his pocket, vibrating.

"Tell Mister Vice President that I'll be ready within the next twenty-four hours...if he isn't bluffing." She gives him a sideways glance. Mid-turn on her way down the hall, Reno speaks.

"You really gonna do it If he isn't being humorous?"

Aerith looks back at him, hair tickling her skin like tiny bugs scaling the curve of her spine.

"If you go a week without food and someone offers you a half bitten sandwich, you're not thinking about their germs or if they're playing a mean spirited prank on you. All you care about is how hungry you've been. Tell Junior to call the phone here." She leaves on that. Her tiny feet thundering down the all until the shadows absorb her.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Having your heart broken isn't so bad the second nor the third time. You might cry—not an outburst. By this point, you already know what to expect. The difficulty breathing, the tightness in your chest. When the cracks on your heart re-open, whatever the soul is made of, seeps out of you.

All you can do is accept that it shall pass.

It's 8 a.m. in the morning. Rufus still hasn't gotten up. Reno helps himself to a shot of vodka. Everyone had filtered out a few hours ago, save for a couple of Honey Bees who lived here. It's just Reno and a shelf of colorful bottles.

Everyday, the distance between the present and his terrible breakup (if it could even be called that) grows. Time works itself out that way. It was a mutual uncoupling, so he thought he'd get over it faster. One shot became three, until he gets sick of slurping from a tiny glass. He generously sips from the bottle, watching a Honey Bee in her normal clothes flipping the chairs on the table. A blonde girl. Pretending to not see him. Nobody likes the Turks for good reason. Like Rufus, they have a muddy reputation.

Cissnei's abuse was emotional—all mouth. Words punctuated by her tongue like a freshly sharpened pencil. Reno cried once, maybe two times if he counted the last time she asked him to leave and meant it. He remembers it feeling like being denied water after a long journey through the desert. Reno oppressed her with violence. He only knows how to properly articulate his anger. Despite the ugly truth, he will never forgive her for forcing him to reconcile with living without her.

Fatigue puddles his vision. The dangling firefly lights lose their shape, becoming fat orbs of fire.

"How do you do it?" Don appears before him on the other side of the bar, looking equally as tired.

"Do what?" Reno croaks.

"What's it like being on the wrong side of history?" Don takes away the bottle.

It takes Reno a moment to process the question. He isn't offended but he knows he should be.

"Help me understand what you're try'n to say." Reno chews at the peeled skin on his lips.

Don curls his fat fingers together. He's the kind of person who talks with every muscle in his face. "I sometimes like to think about what kind of footprints I'm gonna be leaving behind. Ya know, the impact I'm having. The aftermath of it."

"For the love of Gaia, please spare me your stupid platitudes." Reno says inexpressively, grazing the inside of a nostril with this pinky finger.

"I'm not huffing my breath at you, kid. I just really wanna know. You could cut him at the ankles and work your way up. Why don't the rest of you?" Don's breath smells like his breakfast. Greasy. Tobacco. The rolls in his neck eat his golden necklace.

"You're talk'n treason." Reno sucks his teeth.

"I'm talking sense."

"I'm surviving. Just like everyone else. That's your answer. Fucking hell you don't have sense, Don. Not a lick of it."

"Neither do you. If you were smart you'd see the downfall. All big empires must fall. Sometimes they collapse on themselves. ShinRa is on its last leg." Don is smug.

"Says who? You?" Reno does believe that ShinRa will fall. Just not in his lifetime and not anytime soon—he can't fathom it. Also, he cannot believe that Don Corneo causes him to defend ShinRa.

"I've got good intuition." Don tells him all of this because he is confident that Reno won't repeat it. He's not wrong in his assessment of Reno's character. Unlike Tseng, Reno isn't emotionally invested in the company. ShinRa didn't make him the person that he is now. He crafted his ethos straight from he shook and soot of his past.

"I understand you better than those people—all of 'em in their nice clothes." Don wildly gestures at the ceiling, above his head. "You really like working for the kind of people who inherit their money?"

Reno thinks, deeply. No, he doesn't like his place in life, but he's there. There is no better option. Had there been, he never would've became a Turk.

"Don, you're implying that you know a lot more than you're telling the big man."

"I'm a criminal. What do you expect?" Don smiles and pours Reno one more shot. He doesn't take it right away, just stares at the way the light hits the glass and bounces off the slick counter top.

"So would you consider working with me?" Don scoots the glass next to Reno's hand.

A hair gets caught in the links of his bracelet. It shocks Reno like a tiny spark of electricity, stunting his growing smile. Pressing his tongue against the gap between his top front teeth, he glowers at Don with a crooked smirk.

"You can't afford me. See, I've gotten accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle. This ain't it." Reno rejects the shot glass.

Don doesn't appear to be the least bit slighted. His smile shortens is all.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Aerith made a wish years ago. It finally comes true. Butterflies in her stomach have made it impossible to eat.

"Mama." Aerith takes a soapy plate from Elmyra's hand. She dries it off with a dish rag.

Elymra makes a humming noise and quirks her brow. Aerith can see the heartbreak before she inflicts it. Elmyra's broken face would steal the color from the flowers around the house.

"I got a job on the big plate." Aerith doesn't beat around the bush. Her voice is dry from sleeping for so long. She tugs the pale blue towel from her head and her wet hair unravels over her shoulder.

Elmyra stops scrubbing a bent fork. She looks at Aerith like one would at a blatantly stupid person.

"Doing what?" There's meanness to Elmyra's words. Aerith can't blame her for jumping to conclusions—becoming a high dollar slut isn't too far from the truth.

"Making money. What else?" Aerith pretends to be cool. Lying works on the rest of the world, but not Elmyra. Aerith might as well have come straight from her womb. The manifesting sadness is palpable. Elmyra turns off the sink water, the pipes groan. The entire house seems to sigh—letting go of fifteen odd years worth of painful memories.

"You don't wanna be the kind of girl who lives off the kindness of others." Elmyra doesn't raise her voice, surprisingly.

"So whats the other alternative? Die down here?" Aerith holds out her arms.

"Aerith, we make seemingly harmless allowances and don't realize we've piled it atop our souls as extra baggage. When we absolve people where does it go? On us because we took it off them..." Elmyra leaves the pots and pans in the sink.

"I'll send you money and we can fix this place up! And make it..." Feel more like a home than a prison. Aerith cannot say this without repercussions though. Elmyra has spent years trying to right the wrongs the world had done to her.

"Money doesn't mean anything to me." Elmyra's shoulders slump. All the burdens she had been carrying roll off of her. "It never has."

"Yes, but money makes existing a bit more tolerable." Aerith didn't wake up in the middle of the afternoon expecting to win. After all, it is possible that Rufus ShinRa had been pulling her leg, getting her panties wet to work up to nothing.

"You think you're just existing?" Elmyra grimaces.

"Living like a mole in the dirt sure as heck ain't living."

"If you say so. Is that the adult in you talking all this big nonsense?"

"Tseng has my back." Aerith reassures herself. He had helped them get along this far.

"If thats the man you wanna have faith in..." The rest of what Elmyra has to say doesn't matter. She knows it.

Aerith had gotten out of bed with a made up mind.

"I hate him with all the cells in my body." Elmyra drops a plate against the floor, ending the conversation.

.

.

.

.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for being patient/getting this far. I'm sort of writing on the fly since work takes up so much of time and trying to balance my social life. I hope you enjoyed your time. Will update soon. Leave a review if you like. Will fix errors missed eventually.**


	5. CPR

" **Everybody is nothing until you love them."~** **Tennessee Williams**

.

.

.

.

.

.

...

Rufus ShinRa called. Not exactly twenty-four hours later. A woman with a silky voice, instead, called the Honey Bee Inn and asked for an Ava. Well, no one had a clue who Ava was, so word spread throughout the brothel until Aerith arrived for the early morning shift the next day. The worst shift the Honey Bee Inn has to offer. No one makes money during breakfast. It was heaven sent. She quit on the spot. Leaving behind her wings for the next girl and tossed her itchy lingerie into the garbage.

Aerith said goodbye to her flowerbed in the crumbling church, picking as many flowers as she could and left them in the kitchen windowsill for Elmyra.

The entire train ride, Aerith sweats through the fabric of her only nice, black dress. When she was fifteen, she bought it for a funeral. It was too big then but now she fills it out generously. The smokey gray sky comes into view and her heart just about leaps out of her chest. She chews her lips until they bleed.

Her life is about to change, drastically. Possibly for the worst. Hopefully for the best. She is willing to gamble. So far, she's gotten by fairly well on her luck. Aerith Gainsborough might actually be the luckiest girl on the planet.

Aside from Elmyra she has nothing to lose. Life, from here on out, will be about gaining.

She steps off the train, onto the station platform in her chunky heels, immediately assaulted by the loud bustle of the upper plate. The smell of rain that has yet to fall tingles the inside of her nose. A sudden burst of thunder buckles her knees.

The sensory overload paralyzes her in the middle of the foot traffic. She clutches her denim jacket and barely full bag to her chest.

People bump into Aerith with their shoulders and bags from all directions. Slum-folks aren't known for their softness but she'd always imagined that the upper plate was a place of manners.

She hunches forward to catch her bag slipping from her weak grasp. Bile foams in the back of her mouth. Too much sound. Too many smells. The train station smells like body-odor and wet metal. And the damn sky. Her ears ring violently. She sweats harder. The fabric sticks to her armpits.

Is it too late to turn around and go home? She silently asks the universe.

What is your definition of home, Cetra? The cosmos replies.

Aerith doesn't have an answer. Nowhere has ever felt like home. Her eyes moisten with tears.

A hand grabs at her elbow and jerks her straight on her feet and into a quick strut. Aerith wretches a grasp. She looks up to face a very focused Reno. The sight of something familiar placates her disorientation. Reno is equally as rude as the coming and going passengers. He shoves and nudges, yanking Aerith along with him. He forces her to walk so fast, she almost trips in her heels.

"Slow down!" She jerks them both into a stop and she drops her bag.

"Just cos you're mildly attractive and got a nice pair of tits doesn't mean I'm about to baby you. We're on a schedule." He looks at his watch.

"I don't expect you to baby me, but a little bit of consideration would be nice. You haven't even bothered to ask me how the ride up here was?" She snatches up her bag, throwing her denim jacket over her shoulder.

"I don't care how the ride was!" Reno yells.

Aerith presses her lips together into a frown, gritting her teeth. She quickly swipes at a tear before it can roll down her cheek.

They stand in the middle of the noisy station. Trains roar around them. Feet beating against the smooth, square surface. Aerith can tell that, at one point in time, the dull, scuffed up tile used to shine.

Reno takes a step back, mentally. Taking a deep breath, he wheezes, "Look, this shit is just as strange to me as it is to you. You might not be a dumb girl but this whole damn thing is wildly dumb."

She doesn't react to his words. Reno breathes shakily through his nose. He takes her bag from her arms, patting at her back. They try again at a slower pace.

Thunder shakes the sky and pours down a strong vibration. Aerith reflexively hooks her arm with his, glueing all her weight to his side. She presses her head against him.

Reno has never met a fully grown adult scared of thunder. He represses the urge to laugh.

"How old are you?" But he lets her hang on to him. It isn't causing him any harm.

"Twenty-Something." She sniffles.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The President has never been able to remember Rufus' birthday. He's always a few day ahead or a few days late. They quietly eat brunch together before a conference call from Junon. Daddy ShinRa, Rufus thinks in Reno's crooning voice, chews on his bacon like a bull. Crumbs of toast pepper his thick mustache.

"I'm getting engaged, dad." Rufus breaks the monotony of their silence. He combs a hand through his hair and takes a sip of his mimosa.

The President picks up a butterknife with his chubby fingers and spreads jelly along the brown center of another piece of toast. He makes a gruff emotionless noise before shoveling the toast into his fat-lipped mouth.

"I'm in love." Rufus sits his glass down with a light thud against the table.

The President looks at his son, an eyebrow cocked. The butterknife looks so tiny in his massive pink hands.

"What do you want me to say?" The President's ears wiggle as he chews on the wad of jelly soaked bread.

"I don't want you to say anything specifically. I just want you to acknowledge that your son is about to become a different man." Rufus helps himself to a waffle with his bare hands.

"Marriage doesn't make you different." The President coughs into a napkin.

Rufus' cell phone lights up. Under Reno's name reads: SHE'S HERE.

"Love makes you different. I'm very different now, old man." Rufus grabs a limp strip of bacon.

"We will see." The President grumbles distantly, clearly something else is on his mind. Never his own son. Always something else. It used to hurt Rufus. His high GPA was a cry for attention. It got him scholarships he didn't need.

The saddest feeling in the world is wondering if your parents truly love you. Having a child should be sacred.

Rufus doesn't feel sorry for himself anymore.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Reno cuts her some slack. By the time they arrive at the hotel, the tension had long vanished. They become two people caught in a precarious situation and it was up to them to help each other navigate the strangeness.

Aerith is unable to enjoy the magnitude of the suite with the thick drops of rain pelting the window. A roar of thunder shakes the glass and she scurries to close the black curtains, shutting out the pale light.

"That scary huh?" Reno props the soaking wet umbrella against the glass coffee table, sitting her bag on the floor next to it.

Aerith keeps her back to him, gripping the curtains. Hangs her head low for a moment before replying, "Not so much behind the curtains. Yea."

The sound of the expensive looking wall clock is louder than their individual thoughts. Whipping out his phone, Reno flops onto the couch.

"Rufus expects you to stay here until he makes the big announcement." His throat feels scratchy.

"You said we were on a schedule?" Aerith finally turns to look at him.

"Yes. We meet Rufus at six thirty and that is..." Reno rolls back his sleeve to look at his shiny watch "...'bout five hours from now."

"Until then?" Aerith sucks on her bottom lip.

Reno grimaces, clears his throat before speaking. He takes a sweeping look at her, propping an arm on the back of the couch.

"I'm 'sposed to take you shopping. That's if you want to—you wanna take pictures in that." He quirks a brow, with no real opinion of her black dress.

"What's the matter with what I've got on?" Aerith picks at a ball of lint on the hem.

"Nothing, but do you want your first impression on the world to be in that? I'm a regular dude. I don't care about that kinda shit but Rufus ain't a regular schmegular dude." Reno chews on his thumb nail.

"No. I don't wanna go shopping. It's raining." And the sky is too loud.

"Reasonable." Reno shrugs.

"Will he be upset if I show up like this?" Aerith suddenly feels less confident.

Reno doesn't know. Rufus likes surprises and spontaneity.

"Would you be upset if you weren't a schmegular dude?" She dimly smiles, disappointed in that lost certainty she had when she snatched the damned thing off the hanger in her closet.

He laughs a little, completely in awe at the absurdity of the scheme. Rufus ShinRa hasn't 'outdone' himself. Reno just never would've guessed he'd have a hand in such a huge lie.

And the lie is so vapid that it just might work. Reno has seen far prettier girls on the planet, but he gets it. She blinks back at him with her fading smile—he totally gets it.

Fucking nuts. He thinks to himself. Tiny lint balls, wrinkles and all, he wouldn't mind sitting across from her at a dinner table.

"There are more important things to be mad about." He stretches.

"I disagree. I think this is a very important. The whole world is about to have its eyes on me." Aerith sits on the opposite arm of the couch.

"Then go naked. Fuck—ugly girls don't work at the Honey Bee..."

"You think I'm pretty?" Aerith grins again, cutting him off.

"I said you're not ugly." He points a finger at her.

"Same thing."

Reno sits up to get a better look at her. His rat tail slithers over his shoulders, opening his mouth to make a snide remark but Aerith says, "You're not too bad yourself."

It derails his train of thought.

"Honestly?" Reno smirks disbelieving.

Aerith holds up a hand then flattens her palm on her chest.

"Honest." Since the moment she laid eyes on him.

Reno lays back down, throwing an arm over his face. She thinks she has made a mistake in being so transparent, or maybe not transparent enough. Not that it can count for anything. She is here to marry a ShinRa. Not to flirt with his Turk. Reno slides his other hand in his pants. His belt buckle sits right above his sharp wrist.

Aerith stands from the couch arm to retrieve her bag. She'd packed herself a deck of old stained cards to amuse herself.

Reno pretends to fall fast asleep as he attentively listens to her footsteps ghosting around the suite. He hears her grab a coffee cup and fill it up with tap water. Then she comes back to the couch, plopping herself on the floor at the coffee table.

.

.

.

Aerith wants a nicer dress. Her fear happens to be stronger than her superficial desires. She sits in the center of the floor on her third round of solitaire. Room service moves like molasses.

"So. The plan is to announce the engagement at Rufus' birthday party?" She had figured.

"Mhmm." Reno grumbles drowsily. His head is propped against the arm of the couch, fingers folded on his chest.

Aerith swills the saliva in her mouth, turning over another card. Her decision to be here grows darker as the day progresses. Reno breathes loudly, wheezing almost. He grumbles a little. She throws down a six of spades and gets on her knees, crawling closer to the couch. Aerith rests her elbows on the cushions, accidentally nudging Reno in his side. He opens one eye. She leans in, narrowing her piercing stare.

"What is Junior really like?"

"You must not read the tabloids? Shame you're about to go and marry the bastard." Reno's laugh rumbles from his stomach. He rubs a hand against his eyelids.

"I do. The papers lie." Aerith is serious.

"Sometimes they do. Most of the time actually."

"You're around him all day—tell me 'bout him." She rests her chin in her palm, not taking her eyes off of him. Reno feels her fixed gaze pressing against his soul—there's no other way to describe the feeling.

"I don't like him. He sucks. You'll learn." Reno fakes a cough.

"Describe him in three words. Please?" Aerith gently shakes his arm.

Reno reciprocates her glower, not nearly as pretty but effective. She frowns harder than him though.

"Shit. Shitty. Shittiest." He answers.

"Fine. Be a jerk." She settles back in front of the coffee table.

Room services knocks on the door and Reno jumps up to answer.

"You'll get to experience it all for yourself, Ava." He says in passing.

Ava. That is who she is supposed to be, she remembers. Aerith reflects on the loneliness that has grown over the landscape of her soul. It hits hard, like a punch in the chest—she is surrounded by endless noise. Reno sits the hot plates on top of her cards. His shoes sigh against the carpet. He walks back and forth. Sits clean cups in front of her. Cracks open a can of cola from the mini bar. Aerith curls inside of herself.

This is lonely behavior. Imprisoning herself inside of a luxury hotel with a stranger. Preparing to marry the world's most familiar stranger.

Reno sits on the floor next to her and pops a piece of fried shrimp in his mouth.

"I will say this..." He dips another piece in tartar sauce. "Rufus doesn't think like us. None of the big people do. They're in a different world."

"You inhabit the same world though." Aerith grabs a cup and fills it with soda.

"I've acclimated to the climate but I'm not one of them. I just do a job." He licks the corners of his mouth, not seeming to care about his company. He even chews under his fingernails for crumbs.

"That's still participating." She starts on her T-bone with her bare hands. Too embarrassed to use the silverware. She doesn't know how to properly hold a fork and knife.

"You're participating too, kiddo." Reno isn't fazed by the way she shreds through the meat with her teeth. He didn't sit close to her on purpose. It just happened that way. Reno stops eating to take off his dark blazer and rolls up the sleeves of his ill-fitted white shirt. Too tall for a size small but skinny enough for a large to fit too loose. His elbow accidentally grazes her arm. She blushes.

"Right." She hasn't thought about what happens after she marries Rufus. Will it even get that far?

"You think you're gonna actually make it to the altar?" Reno sips from his cup. Like he had just read her mind.

"It's all or nothing from here on out. I don't wanna push a wagon of flowers for the rest of my life. I didn't like getting my butt groped at the Honey Bee either. I'm all out of options." She struggles chewing on a thick bite. There's too much in her mouth to swallow.

"I didn't have much of a choice either." He licks his fingers, thinking really hard about his past. He didn't have time to grow up. Adulthood began the very moment he was able to string together coherent sentences. Cissnei used to beg him to just 'turn it off'. It isn't that simple. He grimaces because he shouldn't be thinking about her at all.

"Do we ever?" Aerith says with a mouthful. She looks at him. The dip of his nose is sorta crooked, unique to him. He's got the longest eyelashes she's ever seen on a man.

Biting into another shrimp, he returns her gaze, shrugging with his well performed charisma.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

They arrive at the nicest looking establishment Aerith's ever set foot in. Never has she seen so much clean white. White floors, white napkins, white table cloths, off white candles, white flowers...

"ShinRa." Reno says to the hostess in her neatly pressed white dress and ghostly blonde hair. Aerith reaches down to pinch the unfamiliar flower. Its petals so smooth, it startles with the irrational thought that her sullied fingers would ruin its luster. She sheepishly snatches her hand away.

"Where is Mr. Tseng?" The hostess wrinkles her nose at Aerith, who, compared to the company occupying the opulent space, looks like a schmegular nine to five kind of girl. Aerith bristles at hearing Tseng's name.

"On vacation. Can you take her to the table." Reno steps beside Aerith, urging her with his hand at the small of her back.

"Wait! You're not staying?" Aerith grabs his arm.

"I'll be around, just not in here. Not my kind of crowd." Reno has learned to enjoy the finer things since being employed by ShinRa, but the difference is still night and day. Night without the stars. Day clouded by constant gray clouds.

"Reno, what if they don't like me?" Standing closer to him, Aerith covers her mouth but whispers loud enough for the hostess to hear.

"They already don't." Reno fails at sounding comforting. "If it makes you feel any better, they don't like me either. They ain't 'sposed to."

He leaves her to ponder on that. Leaves briskly as though the place smells the exact opposite of wealthy. Aerith never would've dreamed that wealth has a distinct smell.

She waits until she can't make out his form through the stained glass window. The only pop of color this place has to offer.

"Follow me." The hostess snaps.

.

.

Anticipation has kept Rufus focused. He's always worked best under the influence of anxiety. His shining moments have been when he's most induced by it. Like that time he told the press to 'suck his cock' when asked about the lobbyists involved in the mayoral elections. Domino has yet to be unseated.

The President didn't like it one damn bit, but he doesn't like any chunks nor bits of Rufus.

Although he is amongst his peers, they do ogle at him as he pushes around his pasta. Rufus has many friends but it's a known fact that he likes to eat alone. It thickens that fog of mystery surrounding who is. Usually Tseng accompanies him for his public dining.

Rufus takes the bottle of wine and drinks straight from it, ignoring his half full glass. He misses Tseng's cool indifference. It has only been a week or two, but being without Tseng, there is a painfully obvious difference.

Aerith's journey to Rufus' table is like stepping through deepening waters. Her feet feel heavier and her heart shoots up into her throat. The attention stopped being about her overly-washed dress. More eyes stick to her skin as the gap between she and Rufus closes. She doesn't even hear the hostess speak. Her eyes can only settle on the flushed face Rufus.

He rises from his seat, almost spilling his wine. He catches it before it tips over the table.

"How was the trip?" Rufus' white suit hugs his body, the creases of the fabric sinew around his muscles.

"Bumpy." She nods her head three times, rubbing her hands on the side of her thighs. The hostess performs a starkly different demeanor. She scoots back a seat for Aerith.

"Are you enjoying yourself, Rufus?" The hostess stupidly grins at him.

"If I weren't enjoying myself, I wouldn't still be here." Rufus' eyes glaze over.

It knocks the wind out of her and she dismisses herself.

Aerith attempts to sit like a 'proper lady' would.

"So it starts now. How do you feel?" Rufus is so elated, he gets a mild erection. Running a hand down the front of his suit, he settles back down. Aerith absently turns the menu over.

"I feel..." She curls her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Like an imposter."

Rufus massages his chin. He gives their surroundings a quick glance and realizes that they are getting the attention that he'd so desired. Their eyes lock. Aerith swallows.

"You're no imposter. You're you and this is all at your disposal." Rufus waves a hand around.

"Is it really?" Her eyes don't sparkle like their first encounter. Rufus doesn't miss this detail. He deflates into the stiff chair. The room deadens. The intensity of the silence causes Rufus to shift his posture.

"I'm sorry." She takes a deep breath and transforms into Ava. "Are we 'sposed to be acting like we are in love now?"

"Yes. It could feel less like an awkward first date." Rufus regathers his composure.

She moves her chair to be closer to him. The smell of her soap wafts off her skin. She's been sweating since she stepped out of the car. Unlike the cheap scent she wore at the Honey Bee Inn. It's a strange thought to have but she smells like a real person. The outside pollution soaked into her scalp. She tangles their fingers together, gripping tightly until their skin touching feels natural.

"This is sobering." He laughs.

"Are you already drunk Mister V.P.?" Ava is supposed to be witty.

"Not yet." Rufus gets closes, picking his fork up and digs it into his pasta.

"Are you nervous?" Aerith tries not to pay attention to their audience.

"Just about as nervous as you are." He lies. They unintentionally melt into room startling laughter.

Aerith thinks about the five hours she spent with Reno. It dims her laughter. Rufus doesn't notice. He takes a fork full of pasta to her mouth. Her teeth clink against the fork as she bites down. The fleshly way her lips close around the silver kindles something inside of him.

It's the lack of expectations that is so exciting.

"Did you buy that dress today?" He can smell the detergent.

"No. Comes from the back of my closet." She chews the cheesy noodles.

"Was nothing to your liking?" Rufus' eyes don't leave her face. Men have always seen through Aerith, searching for other women inside of her.

"Uuuhh...well. I'm just not ready to be gobbled up by your world yet." She licks her lips.

Rufus ponders on her statement. The waiter appears beside the table and Rufus waves him off.

"We're fine." He snaps.

A painful moment of speechlessness. The waiter floats to another table.

"You're very insightful for a slum rat. My world huh?" He wonders if all people beneath the plate are this introspective.

"Yes. Your world. You call it yours all the time. It is a scary place. Reno thinks so too." Aerith wants more pasta but doesn't know how to go about asking for it. She doesn't want to be a begging 'slum rat'.

"Reno is uncultured and troubled by irrational fears. You know he's an addict right? Well, you wouldn't know, but you ought to." Rufus spins more pasta around his fork.

"I'm uncultured and you want to marry me." She unhooks their fingers and just takes the fork from his hand.

Rufus' smile reaches the corners of his eyes. For some time, he doesn't speak. Aerith continues to eat off his plate.

"I'm an addict too ya know?" She whispers into his ear.

"Pray tell? What are you addicted to?" Rufus loves the smell of her sweaty skin.

"Attention." She inhales one long noodle and gets cheese on her chin.

"Good attention or bad attention, Ava?"

Aerith presses her wet-pasta lips on his cheek.

.

.

.

.

Reno can hear Rude tapping against his keyboard through the phone. He attempts to light his second cigarette, balancing his phone on his shoulder.

"I cannot find a single thing on an Ava Greer. There are some Greers but none of them live beneath the plate." Rude's cough vibrates in Reno's ear.

"Gotdamnit." Reno's lighter is out of fluid. He leans back against the stone wall between two immaculate pots of shrubbery. Clearly imported from another region. Flowers don't grow in Midgar. They sure as hell don't survive long with their shitty air quality.

"I mean we should worry but there are a lot of undocumented folks in the slums. Who is she to you, Reno?"

Reno has considered telling Rude about the whole ruse. His gut tells him not to. So he doesn't.

"Looking for some distant relatives." Reno notices the paparazzi hanging around the street corners and behind cars. Why does Rufus ever bother leaving the house? He's rich enough to not have to.

"Huh." Rude suspects he is lying but when Reno doesn't want anyone in his business, there is no changing his mind.

"I'll be back in the office later tonight. I've got a fuck-ton of paperwork to follow up on." Reno gives up and puts his cigarette away. He doesn't want to ask some rich dickhead for a light.

"You alright?" Rude and his goddamned intuition.

"I'm alright. Just need a vacation." Reno spits on the ground. The concrete absorbs his saliva.

"Cool. Call me when you're free." Rude hangs up before he can say bye. They do that to each other often.

Like clockwork, Rufus steps out of the restaurant with his 'mysterious woman' in tow.

Madness doesn't quite ensue. Aerith just doesn't know what to expect, in the street being seen with a ShinRa. She hasn't abandoned her fear of being ShinRa's most wanted. Living for so long doing purposeless things has just caused her to be apathetic. The first camera goes off then her vision is spotted with quick bursts of light.

Reno approaches them reluctantly.

"You didn't give me time to get the damn car, Rufus." He grumbles.

"No need for it. Ava and I are going to walk." Rufus decides in the moment. Reno gawks at him. It is the complete opposite of what they had planned. He bounces back from the shock, straightening his neck, because that is all he can do. Rufus makes all the final decisions.

"We will meet you back at the hotel in an hour or so?" Rufus hints that he doesn't want Reno to come back at all.

Rufus glowers at him with his bright eyes. The flashing lights burn, Reno squints. He swipes his thumb against the tip of his tongue, removing a string of lint.

"Sure thing." Reno lowers his head and sinks his hands in his pockets.

Aerith allows Rufus to guide her through the ruckus, but she glances over her shoulder at an impassive Reno. Feeling a cold 'sorry' pang in her stomach. The cameras follow behind. They blind her with their bright explosions and she can't make out Reno under the blurred film of her vision.

They begin to hurl passive aggressive questions her way.

There's only comfort in how amazing Rufus smells.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The smell of the left over room-service startles Rufus when they enter the suite. She and Reno had left behind half empty glasses of cola and there is still food on some of the plates. Rufus immediately shrugs it off, tugging out of his blazer, neatly folding it behind the plush chair.

He opens the curtains. It takes everything in Aerith not to scream at him. She keeps her composure. They are high up and away from the street. It had stop raining. The wet glass is foggy.

"I see why you didn't have much of an appetite." Rufus unhooks his belt.

"Are you staying with me?" She forces her attention away from the city-scape.

Coming out of his shoes, Rufus props himself against the chair, frowning at her like she had just asked a ridiculous question.

"Why wouldn't I?" He pulls off his socks.

"I just thought you wanted to move slower." She also takes off her shoes.

"Am I moving too fast?" He stands straight. A minutes passes before Aerith can muster up more of her courage.

"I think it's really starting to click with me." She needs to call Elmyra.

Rufus unbuttons his shirt, hanging his head to the side. A short smile grows on his lips.

"This is very insane, but, Ava..." He holds the thought as he slides out of the shirt. "This isn't the craziest thing that I've done."

"What's the craziest thing you've done?" Aerith unties her hair, just to give her hands something to do.

Rufus unfastens his pants. He laughs and his abs tighten.

"I caught a man cheating at a game of poker. It didn't turn out well for him." He now stands completely naked. Unfazed, he strides the mini bar for a bottle of clear liquor.

"You killed 'em." Aerith taps into the sizzling energy of the air, and just knows.

"I made a point." Rufus vanishes into the bathroom.

Aerith stands by the chair for a while, sorting through her changing emotions. Still taken by her curiosity. Rufus runs bathwater, whistling perfectly in tune.

"Come here." Rufus' voice floats out the bathroom.

Aerith goes to stand in the doorway. The tub is filled to its full capacity but Rufus sits on the edge of it. He'd drunk the liquor straight. It's not half-full but theres nothing sitting in the neck of the bottle.

"Take off that hideous dress." He winces.

"You don't like it at all." She really should've made an effort to look the role.

"You make it look a lot nicer than what it actually is. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Take it off." Rufus never asks for anything she notices.

She unzips the sides and feels relief. All the air she'd been depriving herself off fills her chest. Aerith slips it over her head, now in nothing but her underwear. He motions for her to sit next to him. She obeys. The porcelain is cold tub is cold against her behind. Rufus snatches the dress from her hand and shoots it across the room. It flops beside the toilet.

"Let's get to know each other better." Rufus hands her the bottle, she takes it by the neck. He lifts his legs over the edge and plunges himself inside of the tub. The water overflows onto the floor.

"Ask me a question." He drags his wet hands down his face. His blonde eyelashes stick together.

"Shouldn't you be asking me the questions? I'm really the stranger here." Aerith knows the basics about him. His elite education and magna cumme laude status. The embarrassing drug stories. Everything bad he's done that has harmed his father's brand. His very public sexual habits.

"How much of what you know about me is purely assumption?" Rufus' face is expressionless.

"A lot of people have suffered because of ShinRa. I think my assumptions are closer to the truth than you might believe." Aerith stares at him. No emotion flickers across his face.

"Yes." His jaws tighten.

"How does that make you feel?" She will asks the questions if he so wishes.

Rufus leans against the tub, resting his chin on his arm. Water drips down the bridge of his nose.

"It was my idea to play this game so I have to be honest."

"In sickness and in health. For better or worse..." Aerith thinks however the hell it goes.

Rufus lids dip slowly. He hasn't ever thought about it. To any rational person, what has transpired over the years with the corporation is, inarguably, bad. He has always figured that it is just how the world is and unfortunately is the world that he inhabits.

"To be honest, Ava. I don't feel anything." He looks her directly in the eyes. "I didn't create the world."

"You keep the wheels turn'n, though." Aerith's peers down at him, pressing her chin against her shoulder.

"Point made. I guess I do participate in 'upholding the establishment'. I'm a criminal." He laughs through his teeth.

"Why, Rufus?" She says his name with too much vulnerability. It catches him off guard. He holds his poker face together though.

"I just don't care. Maybe you can convince me—make love change me." He tugs at her panties.

"I think you're already set in your ways." She shakes her head.

"I'm not incapable of change. Don't deny me the opportunity." Rufus leans back into the warm water.

Aerith sits the bottle by her feet. She slides her panties down her leg as she stands. Her bra goes next. She sinks into the water on top of him, anchoring him into a deep kiss. He wraps his arms around her waist, pressing her into his body.

"You don't exactly taste like a bad person." She breathes into his mouth. His teeth grazes her tongue.

"How would you know what a bad person taste like?" He pulls her head back with his fingers in her hair.

Rufus is right. Aerith wouldn't know. She had only ever kissed one man until now.

.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for reading my AU nonsense. I swear this is a RenoxAerith fic. It might not seem like it right now but I PROMISE. I have an idea of where I wanna drive the plot, so I hope it unfolds neatly. Any errors I missed I will fix later. After I write a chapter, if I don't hurry up and upload it, it will stay unpublished and collect dust in my files. Once again, thank you. Leave a review if you like. Named this chapter after one of my favorites songs right now.**


	6. Whipped Cream

" **Just saw two ants drown together in my bathtub and it reminded me of us: a love story." ~ Melissa Broder**

.

.

.

.

.

.

Reno's boots squeak against the tile floor when he steps off the elevator. He swipes his badge against the sensor, the red light turns green and the door to the Turk's office unlocks. He doesn't want to think about the future. What is in store is bound to be chaos. Rufus has more failures under his belt than successes. A part of Reno is worried about Ava. A grown woman scared of thunder and lightning. He rolls his shoulders, strolling towards his desk.

Daddy ShinRa had decided to liquidate the department. Only through Rufus' stubborn will and his absolute need to be doing 'something' changed the President's mind. They aren't as powerful anymore—the little projects they do engage in are still very effective. Tseng won't have it any other way. He's got Veld's shoes to fill. Reno doesn't care, as long as his bills are paid.

"You missed Rude." Elena swivels her chair around her cubicle.

"Yea." Reno opens the deep second drawer in his desk and reaches for the room temperature energy drink.

Elena watches him sit and unlock his computer screen. Reno doesn't dislike Elena but she annoys him a great deal with her perpetual 'freshness' about everything. She isn't a hardened criminal. Tseng goes about filling Veld's shoes but he has his own touch. Elena is straight from a military family with good grades and a good social standing. She acts like it too.

"Are you pulling another late night? She leans against the arm of the chair and it crackles under her weight.

"When you're baby sitting Rufus, there ain't nothing but late nights." Reno doesn't expect for Rufus to call him up any time soon. Cooping himself up in a hotel room with an attractive woman should placate the rest of Rufus' evening.

An hour or so. Reno snorts to himself. One can never really know with Rufus.

Elena scoots her chair inside of Reno's cubicle, props her elbow on his desk.

"Well if you ever want to rant, I'm always willing to listen." Elena purses her lips. She smells like baby powder. For someone with a wealthy background, her mascara looks cheap. Her eyelashes look like tangled spider webs and her pale pink lipstick crinkles.

"If you wanna make friends with me, you gotta learn personal space." Reno replies flatly without looking at her. The statement doesn't seem to stun Elena but she does get quiet. Lowering her head, she pushes her self back with the toe of her boots, sliding back into her cubicle.

"Thank you." Reno rasps a sigh.

Elena goes back to typing quietly. Rude tells him not to be so hard on Elena but it is very hard to find common ground with a girl who is an alumni at the same university Rufus graduated magna cum laude. They attended the same private grade school too.

"I think you've got a prejudice." Rude had said.

"Damn right I do." Reno wouldn't deny it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

More often than not, Aerith has regarded expectations as dream killers. It is how she copes with her unchecked trauma.

The bruises on heart tingle. With her nose pressed into the clean pillow case, she breathes and her warm breath disperses along her face. Rufus licks between her ass cheeks and a humming sound, like bees, starts in her chest. Rising to her head. Fills her ears a faint vibration.

Aerith sighs to alleviate herself of the supernatural sensation tickling the back of her throat, thinning out her slippery moans. He plants a generous string of kisses up her back.

This wasn't her idea of 'success' when she was seventeen (the pressing time in one's life that forces you to consider the future).

The same two fingers he'd pressed between the lips of her vagina, he shoves into her mouth. Shocked by the bitterness, dizzied by the overwhelming smell of his cologne that soap could no get rid of, Aerith's sucks his fingers so hard, his nails scrape her tongue. Rufus' hard body presses her down into the mattress.

What if he changes his mind if he decides that I don't feel good enough—the thought doesn't cause her to panic but it makes it hard to focus. So be it, if it's to be the case.

"What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?" Rufus buries his face in her damp hair. The tip of his penis glides against her saliva drenched labia. He drags his fingers from her mouth, her teeth scraping his index finger, and grips the base of her neck.

She can barely breathe. The noises in her head louder than her precarious lust for womanhood.

"Why?" Aerith's asks with the little wind in her chest. She raises her hips, parting her thighs.

"I want to absorb your pain." Rufus slips inside of her. She moans straight from her gut. It breaks the buzzing in her ears.

"Being born..." She mutters into the pillow. Wishing she could sound less honest and more facetious.

"Same." He hoists himself onto his knees, slightly spilling out of her. Rufus secures his hands on her hips. Instinctually, Aerith knows to deepen the arch of her back.

Rufus slams into her steadily. She counts the seconds in between each thrust. He gives her, precisely, ten hard pumps, and just stops. The shock of not feeling him is devastating. She gasps like a fish on dry land.

He crawls out of the bed, holding his wet erection in his hand. Consternation darkens his eyes. Aerith continues to lie on her stomach.

For a moment, he just stands still, scanning the end-table his phone and a lamp occupies.

"No condoms." He wheezes after a while and sits on the edge of the bed. The muscles in his back twitch.

"Has that ever stopped you before?" Aerith doesn't mean it but she felt the need to speak.

"You're terrible." He genuinely laughs.

It has been a terribly long time since Aerith has had sex. The feeling had completely gotten rid of her guilt. She presses her groin against the mattress.

Rufus steadies his breathing, still holding his penis.

"Do you think you're making a mistake?" Aerith whispers.

"No. Mistakes are failures. This hasn't failed." He lays back down, his attention on the ceiling as he nuzzles his head in the pillow beside her.

Aerith sits up on her elbows to observe the topography of his beautiful face. To be rich and gorgeous simultaneously must really be a curse.

"If it makes you feel any better, you're the second man I've ever been with." She waits for his expression to change.

"Really?" He glares at her out the corner of his eye.

"Yea. Really." She hovers to kiss side of his mouth and crawls on top of him.

"That's good to know. Tell me more things I don't know about you." Rufus shuts his eyes.

Aerith doesn't know where to start. Kissing his chin, she tells him her favorite color. Licks the protrusion of his Adam's apple then mentions her worst fear—the sky falling. Rufus laughs and she kisses his abdomen.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The next morning Aerith doesn't wake up alone but she does wake up without Rufus. She hears Reno's voice, loudly whispering into his phone. Through the thin crack of her door, she watches him pace back and forth. She can't make out the conversation but she assumes it's Rufus, and waits five minutes before crawling out of the sea of white pillows and Rufus' cologne. She wraps the fluffy white bathrobe around her body then steps into the sunlit room. Reno notices her and stops talking. He actually hangs up the phone. It couldn't have been Rufus.

"Good morning." Aerith keeps her arms folded over her chest, plagued with shameful uncertainty. She doesn't know why. Reno isn't the judging type of person.

"It's two o'clock. Get dressed." He had fished through the mini bar and sips straight from a bottle of whiskey.

"I don't have to listen to you. I don't like your tone." Aerith says dryly.

Reno spins the cap back on the bottle, sucking on his top lips. He squints at her through the blinding sunrise. Her eyes catch the light and they don't shine, they burn. He's never had a poetic understanding of the world, not being an artist of any sort, but her eyes sparkle like her soul is at a constant war with her physical body. Reno gets the strange feeling, like it's possible that she isn't real.

"You ain't listening to me. Direct orders from the boss. Your fiancé. The guy orchestrating this shit show." Reno is suddenly self-conscious about how he might appear to her, drinking so early in the morning. It's not that early but it's too early to be guzzling hard stuff.

Aerith watches his conflicting emotions change the color of his demeanor. His self assured gait turns into a lanky sulk. She sits on the arm of the couch with her back towards the window. The hot sun light burns through her robe. There's a ghostly sizzling upon her soul. The sky is laughing at her now.

"Rufus says you're an addict." She notices the distance he placed between himself and the bottle

Reno is thrown off by it. Who wouldn't be? Not being much of a liar, he can't suppress his irritation. The corner of his mouth twitches. His face twists up like something foul smelling floated around the room.

"Yea." He shrugs his shoulders. "We all are in some shape or form. What's your addiction?"

Aerith hasn't been able to make sense of her attraction towards him. It's an itch. A very bad itch she needs to scratch. She crosses her legs, pretending to think about addiction. Reno waits, swaying on his feet. His grimace sweetening into a smug smile.

"Explosions of dopamine. That's the happy chemical in your brain right?" She taps at her head.

"Bursts of dopamine. You're right. It's the happy chemical. Care to explain?" Just that fast, he forgets that he told her to get dressed for the long day ahead of them.

She had told Rufus she was a addicted to attention. Her answer feels like it could be interchangeable.

"Just being here, with you. Chasing a dopamine rush." She's done many silly things but this beats selling flowers out of a DIY wagon or falling in love with a man she could never really have. Zack mentioned a girl named Cissnei more than once. Aerith always wondered. She still does.

"I got it." At least he thinks he does. "Rufus talks a lot of shit for someone swimming in buckets of it."

"When a man is trying to impress you, he doesn't want to hear another man's name. Only his. His name is 'sposed to be the only name in my mouth." Aerith stands up, revealing a lot of thigh.

"Folks are always going out of their ways to impress him. Hard to believe he's trying to impress you." Reno looks at his watch.

"What are you trying to say? I'm not worth impress'n?" Aerith stops walking and glares back at him impassively.

"I didn't mean it like that." He spits

"What did you mean then?"

"He's got everything in the world already is what I meant." If Reno had a fraction of what Rufus has, he wouldn't waste his time impressing anyone.

"I will tell you a secret. I learned it a long time ago. Materials don't supplement authenticity." And Elmyra had said that luxuriousness doesn't give you charm.

Reno watches her vanish into the curtain drawn darkness of the bedroom. He hopes he is as fluent in authenticity as he believes himself to be.

Rufus isn't present but his scent wafts from every direction.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Every year, since his twenty first birthday, Rufus' phony friends throw him a 'surprise' birthday party. Rufus always acts shocked, even though it's what the tabloids anticipate every year. Every year, since his twenty first, Rufus has made a fool of himself and his father. This year, no one expects anything different but Reno has a feeling strong in his gut that this year will pique.

Rufus is going to be the one delivering a surprise. Would the world be able to see him as someone's husband? Would they even buy it? As he escorted the elusive, yet not really, Ava Greer through the lobby of the hotel, paparazzi waited with their cameras. Word had traveled but had yet to come to a head.

Today's goal, Rufus' distinct orders were for his Ava to be dressed in the finest clothes Midgar has to offer. The mission specifically is to keep Ava company—something Elena could've done but Rufus loves taking the piss out of Reno. She doesn't need his company. Already, Rufus has a poor understanding of his wife to be.

Aerith acclimates to the situation, truly becoming this fantasy woman. The boutique doesn't have price tags, a concept so foreign to her it makes her head spin.

"I can't believe there are people in the world who don't need price tags." She feels guilty cradling three dresses in her arms.

"You haven't seen nothing yet." Reno mutters back.

They find solidarity in their mutual discomfort in the stuffy environment, not looking the part. Reno's badge attracts more attention than necessary. The sales associates are too eager to help them, but poor performers when it comes to masking their disgust.

Reno smells like cigarettes. Aerith's clothes are dingy like they tumbled through the washing machine many times.

Unable to endure her combing through the clothes for another hour, Reno begins mindlessly picking things that don't match and shoving them into her chest until they are offered a dressing room.

Aerith makes herself dizzy with how fast she moves to get out of her old clothes. Overwhelmed by the scent of wealth, gagging at the faint traces of laundry detergent in her clothes. It doesn't matter which dress she likes the most, she is getting all of them.

For what feels like an eternity, Reno watches her ankles step in and out of clothes. Her shadow dancing back and forth beneath the curtain. Her toes unlike the clean manicure she had at the Honey Bee. It's also possible that his memory is just an amalgamation of many painted toe nails he's seen over years. Her feet are pale while Cissnei's were a nice cinnamon brown. Cissnei kept her toes painted white.

She rolls back the curtain and their eyes lock with an uncalled for intensity. They both look like they've been caught in the middle of misbehaving. Aerith blushes. The red of her cheeks seeping down the back of her ears, tinging her shoulders. The dress hugging her body is casual and cottony looking. Fabric with holes shaped like tear drops trimmed with lace. Two tiger-eyed buttons at the cinch of her cleavage. The sleeves hang off her shoulders a tier of more lace.

"You want my opinion?" Reno swallows the spit collecting at the back of his throat.

"Not really." She means she is curious and Reno smiles with the supernatural ability of guessing right.

"You look alright. Not too bad at all." He will never in his life confess to another woman how attractive she is. It makes their heads too big.

"Cool." She wrinkles her nose, dropping her eyes down to the white carpet floor. Aerith hesitates before hiding herself behind the curtain again. Reno watches the dress puddle around her feet.

It's a shame, there's not a day he doesn't think about Cissnei. Even in the presence of new women.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Scarlet is irresistible. One time she cut herself picking up broken pieces of a wine glass and Rufus remembers how sophisticated she looked dabbing a cotton swab in the palm of her hand.

"So you're officially off the market?" She holds her head back as she dry swallows a pill. Her throat bobs. Rufus loves the channel of her throat.

"I'm betrothed." He claps his hands together, trying to pay attention to the growing pile of paperwork and not the perfect places her blood red pantsuit holds her together.

"What's it like?" Scarlet paces, checking the time on her thin golden watch.

"It hasn't even been twenty four hours, Scarlet." He knows she is anxious about presenting a proposal to the board of directors. It's weird knowing that such a high strung, tightly put together, and mean person is capable of being nervous. It's the biggest, well kept secret in the company. Women change when they glut themselves with intimacy. All that feminism dissolves and they melt into the soupy contents of their insecurities. Scarlet brushes back her curled bangs with both of her hands, her shoulders rise as she breathes.

"Sit down. You're making me sweat." Rufus clears his throat. Scarlet does what she is told to do, huffily, but she plops down in the leather seat on the opposite side of his desk. She props her stiletto on her knee. This time, Rufus stands. He walks around his desk an kneels in front of her.

"What?" Scarlet outlines her lips, giving the illusion of dramatic fullness. Rufus grabs her foot from her knee, unbuckling the strap.

"I want you to relax." He massages the soft heel of her foot. Her toes nail are deeper red than her suit and lipstick. Maroon. Without thinking about the future, temporarily withdrawing himself from the concept of marriage, he thinks about sucking her toes.

"Already, you're an unfaithful husband." Scarlet sees the look in his eye.

"Marriage was your idea." He starts with her big toe, his lips caving around it's perfect shape.

"What's her name?" Scarlet doesn't take joy in any of it. It's amusing but jokes eventually get old.

"Ava." He inhales two toes. Her feet taste like the lotion she massages her body in every morning after a shower. "Do you want to meet her?"

Scarlet waits before answering. On the early morning news, she saw Ava's face glaring directly into the bright flash of a camera. She is young, of course. She is beautiful. Beauty is subjective. Scarlet believes she, herself, to be the superior one in looks. But Scarlet is older. Her breasts are starting to sag and the thought of cosmetic surgery makes her skin scrawl. That's cheating. She want's to be naturally beautiful forever.

"Sure. I'd love to meet your wife to be."

.

.

.

.

.


	7. What Comes After Nothing?

" _ **It was a look that suggested emotions happening just past your line of sight: a grief so deep you'd never be able to see it, a love so fierce it could swallow itself completely." ~ Leslie Jamison**_

.

.

.

.

.

.

The car smells like the two different bottles of perfume Aerith had bought with Rufus's credit card. She couldn't decide if she wanted to smell sugary or seductive. The fur coat draped over her shoulders entraps the smell of candy. Her wrists smell like the dark bottled lust. Three silver, gold, and a linked diamond bracelet on her left wrist. The boxes and bags fill up the back seats of the car.

And the greasy bag of cheeseburgers she had begged Reno for. They stink in a good kind of way. She gnaws on a droopy fry as Reno speeds down the highway, having not said a word since he'd swiped his own car at the Burger Shack. Every now and then, when they stop at a red light, he reaches for his large cola in the cup holder. The perspiration slipping between his long fingers. He wears his shades. From the back seat, in the rearview mirror, Aerith can't tell which direction he is looking in. She uses this time to pay him attention. His wrists are sharp and boney. The veins in hands prominent, like most men. He uses his hands a lot. She slurps loudly from her cup and hiccups.

"Reno." Aerith hums.

He turns down the music to a low buzz of symphonic guitars and waits for her to talk. They coast over a pothole. She cups a greasy hand against her new dress, catching the slip of her nipple.

"Thank you." She means it.

Reno slides his shades over his forehead, red hair sticking up like he'd been struck by lightning. His face is expressionless as he glares back at her in the rearview mirror.

"For what? I'm just doing my shitty job." His job isn't always this shitty. Only recently when the department changed. Cissnei leaving him ushered in so much change.

"Yea, but you're surprisingly being a good sport 'bout it" Aerith blushes, looking down in her lap, admiring the half bitten burger juxtaposed to her new pale pink sundress—good quality cotton. They hit another speed bump and the tangle of gold necklaces around her throat bounce against her cleavage.

Reno cracks a smile. They sit in traffic at the longest red light. The left turn signal tics like a bomb on count down. Any minute now. Aerith fantasizes about sucking the sweat from his mouth. It's been her hobby, how she has passed the time—imagining scenarios talking to people, kissing people, having sex with people, and being anywhere else instead of actually doing any of the things. She day dreams an entire fantasy future with Reno without the context of becoming Mrs. ShinRa. Silently, she imagines what he looks like under his clothes, even tries to see it through her connection to the Almighty Cosmic Powers that be, but they deny her the carnal pleasure. Her Cetra powers were only meant to traumatize her, she supposes.

"You're doing a damn good job at keeping it together too." Reno never cranks up the volume of his music again.

"It's only been two days." Aerith finishes her burger drenched in ketchup.

Reno flicks his shades back down the bridge of his nose, speeding through the rush hour traffic. Aerith rubs her knees together and balls the up the ketchup-y tissue paper.

"Two days is a long time." Reno speaks after a while.

"I'm having fun. I promise." She sits her left leg on the armrest between the driver and passenger seats. Reno glances down at her wiggling toes. The lace of the heels snake up her calves. Her unpolished toe-nails taking away from the 'awe' factor. She has feet like she has only known a life of standing.

"You don't have to prove anything to me. Don't make promises to me." Reno makes a steep right turn. Aerith recognizes the streets and their names now. They weren't far from the hotel. The ShinRa headquarters stands menacingly over the city. Lots of metal. Long columns that vanish into a fog. The gray clouds and thin strips of sunlight form a halo around the red diamond logo.

Reno eases in front of the hotel. No sign of cameras. He scans the crosswalk, the people going in and out of the golden frame revolving doors. He steps out first then makes his way to the back door, opening it for her.

"Well look at you, being a proper gentle-sir." She swings her legs over the shopping bags. Aerith twists her ankle mid-step and he catches her elbow. Shakes her up to stand straight. The crumbs from her lunch tumble from the folds of her new dress.

Aerith stares at her reflection in his shades, imagining, again, that she is the only person he sees and will ever see forever and beyond. She gives in to the impulse to swipe the shades from his nose, adjusting them on to her face.

"Thank you for a good day. I haven't had one in a long time." She smiles. He's still hot under a gray filter.

"No sweat." He lets go of her and a camera flashes.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Protests had broken out in Wutai where the ShinRa building had collapsed. A small farmer's town in the process of industrialization. President ShinRa didn't think they'd have to send SOLDIERs at any point to sustain the calm climate. No one expected a building to crumble either.

"I don't think reinforcements will better the situation." Reeve's voice booms from the speaker. When the news had broke, Reeve, with his superb heart, took the private plane to investigate what had really happened to the facility. He took great pride in his safety procedures.

Scarlet violently clicks her pen. The President rocks in his chair, having no real opinion on the empathy skills they needed to exercise. He is more concerned about the money he is going to lose.

"These people are in mourning—we should just bite the bullet and take accountability..." Reeve's static voice is promptly cut off by Scarlets long, heaving sigh.

"Reeve, you're too busy concerned about a very small handful of backwoods degenerates, that you haven't stopped to consider your own safety." Scarlet leans forward against the table. Her chair creaks.

Rufus keeps his mouth pressed against his knuckles and he gazes out the window.

"You really think those people see you with your badge and think you're there to right the wrongs in their life?" She gives him time to answer. A full minute goes by and Reeve has nothing to say.

"Here is what's going to happen if we don't send our men. They're going to start burning shit. Our shit. The infrastructure and stability we are trying to give them. That's money we lose and time wasted. Send the SOLDIERs out now so we don't have to do it later." Scarlet taps her pen against the glass table, glowering at the speakers on the wall.

"Can't the Turks manage it?" Reeve's rattling breaths of frustration flow from each corner of the room.

"Well, that's a lot to ask of such a very small department these days." Rufus interjects, smiling across the table at his father. Tseng had cut his trip short because of the chaos. The anger had pervaded the entire country. Sure, the Wutainese don't have the physical tools necessary to start another war, but they could burn the country to the ground. There were even small protests popping up around Midgar. Rich kids who loved to spite their parents with dreams of liberal progress, like they themselves aren't the product of good progress.

"Reeve, your heart is in the right place but business is business. I don't want to deal with another blown up reactor. AVALANCHE is enough by itself." The President cracks his knuckles.

"Can you believe it? They're calling us oppressors and we've practically rebuilt their shit hole of a country." Scarlet laughs incredulously. "There's people in Midgar starving and you want to send charity overseas. Go fuck yourself, Tuesti."

"President ShinRa?" Reeve ignores her. Static crackles on the line.

Rufus watches his father's forehead crease. The President scratches at his mustache. Heidegger has been unusually quiet up until now. He grumbles, "If they destabilize their own country, then we will have a refugee problem. I think we should station more men there."

"I agree. Reeve, everyone seems to disagree with your methods. I think we have exhausted all of our peace keeping measures." The President nods at a vainglorious Scarlet. She combs a finger through her scalp. Rufus think he sees a bead of sweat rolling down her thin neck.

"Yes, sir." Reeve's voice is now scattered by the breaking signal.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Aerith had lined her bags and boxes up on the couch. She sits for an eternity, watching the sun set through the thick glass of the hotel suite. There's a phone with no one to call. Elymra hadn't answered the first four times. She must be out with her friends. Loneliness creeps in the cracks of her mental forbearance. Another hour goes by. The sky is black. The city lights are too bright to see the stars. The quarter moon climbs over the ShinRa towers. She can hear the distant whip of a helicopter coasting through the night sky. The ambience is different above the plate. There's sirens. Car horns. Lots of noise from every which direction.

In the slums, there are no sirens. When people are injured—that's it. They're just injured or dead. Gun shots, dogs barking, but mostly an eerie silence. The sound of everyone minding their own business.

The door opens but she doesn't stir from her now warm spot on the loveseat. Rufus's dark silhouette sprawls in the window. The white light of the hallway too.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" His voice is hoarse.

Aerith looks at him over her shoulder. Rufus holds his black tie in his right hand. White jacket thrown over his left shoulder. He looks sweaty.

"I hadn't realized. It sorta just happened." She smiles and he returns it.

Rufus scales his hands along the wall for the light switch. The fixtures on the ceiling are shaped like fish bowls. The light bulbs floating in the center.

"Darkness is definitely like that. Always very sudden." Rufus's breathing is wheezy. He throws everything he's holding on the floor. Next to three of her shoe boxes.

"Wanna see what I bought?" Aerith stands up, tugging her dress over hear head. Rufus succumbs to her silently. He sits in the spot she leaves warm. Her panties are simple white cotton. As she bends over to tear through the bags, he watches the hem rise in her ass crack. His smile hardens.

 _Where had she come from_ —he wonders. She wiggles out a long black dress. Faint glitter in the fabric. He's frequented the Honey Bee for years and never managed to catch her in passing. Had God picked her out of thin air? Rufus knits his brows.

She shows him ten different long dresses. Silk blouses. Everything is a neutral color. When she runs out of clothes, she drapes her neck in varying necklaces of gold. All Rufus can focus on is the lack of color on her nails.

"You need a manicure. And a pedicure." He takes her hand to observe her finger nails. "Do you bite them?"

"Yea. I do. When I'm nervous. Most of the time when I'm scared." She had been sitting in dark chewing at her nails until he showed up.

"Are you scared now?" He looks up into her face. Her pony tail lost its height through all the shirt tugging and dress flinging. The curls unravel around her face. She doesn't answer him. Aerith isn't sure what she is. This might be shock. Nothing has settled inside of her yet.

"Red would look good on you." Rufus has a weakness for anything red. It's all Scarlet wears. It's the color of his insides.

Aerith sits on his lap, turning on the fantasy woman she's seen in all the movies

"Why the long face, Junior?" She unfastens the third button of his shirt.

"Please stop calling me Junior. I really hate it." Hate is an understatement. It has always been used to undermine him. Aerith stares into back into his eyes, her expression blank.

"Rufe then." She lowers her chin.

"Rufus please and only Rufus." He wraps a hand under her soft bare thigh.

"Everyone calls you Rufus." She folds an arm over his shoulders, having undone all of the buttons. "I want something personal between us so it feels less like business and more like pleasure."

Rufus drags his hand from her thigh, down her calf and cups her tiny foot. He makes a breathy noise like a laugh. His chest flutters. Aerith holds on to him, watching the bridge of his nose.

"Rufus will do." He is charmed by her authenticity, even if this is supposed to be pretend. The fact that she took it so seriously made his lower abdomen warm. Rufus gazes at her and knows that he could really love her if he really works at it. At some point, perhaps it could be real. Arranged marriages are statistically more successful than the ones contingent upon love. Love can come later. Love should come later and shouldn't have to come first.

Aerith kisses his cheek. The affection suffuses down his throat and explodes in his groin. She smells like a mixture of sweet tasty things.

"You're really something else. You know that right? Has anyone ever told you just how stunning you are?" Rufus wraps his arms around her waist to secure her in place.

"In little ways but not outright. I guess I am a great catch. You couldn't have done better." She whispers into his are and kisses his lobe.

Rufus is starting to believe it too.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The weekend rushes in like a tide to the shore. Arriving as fast as it intends to leave. Weekends are punctuations for Reno's progress. Everyday used to be a weekend. Or rather, there was never a distinct end to anything. Horizons. Reno didn't have any for most of his life.

Funny how when people you love give you ultimatums, sometimes it just isn't enough until they are gone for good, or dead. Death shouldn't be an ultimatum but it is.

He packs a bowl in his favorite tiger's eye pipe. When he bought it, with Cissnei, she mentioned that it looked like smoke trying to smother a sunset. He bought it so he could have that sense of poetry for himself.

He turns on the T.V. an Rufus's face fills up the flat screen. The program runs old clips of many past birthdays or parties. Reno smokes the entire bowl then rolls himself a blunt thirty minutes later—he doesn't want to think about Cissnei. It defeats the entire purpose of getting high. As he scoops the tobacco out of his cigarillo, he glowers at the pipe. Each time he uses it, he is symbolically kissing Cissnei all over again.

 **Rufus ShinRa. Shining thirty-three years. Opulence.**

These words sluice through his divided attention as half sentences. He rolls his blunt.

 _ **Birthday celebration. Mysterious woman. Models. Death. Doom. Wutai.**_

Reno lights his blunt and falls back onto his brown leather couch. His bony knee peeks through the gaping hole of his jeans. With the blunt between his lips, he unscrews the ball of his nipple ring.

Rufus steps inside of a car on the T.V. The camera zooms in on his sober, unsmiling face. No Ava. Just Rufus speeding off from his penthouse. The camera men screaming behind the car.

Reno changes the ring in his nipple, losing one of the tiny balls in the couch cushions.

A hard knock shakes the door and he just knows its Tseng. Rude doesn't knock, he has a key. Reno has no friends, just a register of women he never brings back to his place. Cissnei doesn't exist anymore. The cute front desk receptionist could pull up his address but for what? Tseng is the only reasonable conclusion.

Reno answers the door. It is Tseng with his hair pulled back in a shiny bun. Two rebel strands hanging around each ear. Casual Tsneg doesn't exist. Tseng is always business, even on the weekends. He wears what everyone assumes to be the same white button down shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up to his elbows.

"It's my off day." Reno coughs, eyeing the big black bag Tseng holds at his side.

"I'll pay you time and a half." Tseng walks through the cloud of smoke waving a hand in his face.

"C'mon. You've been gone for days...and was supposed to stay gone a lil longer." Reno slams the door.

Resting the bag on the couch, Tseng scans the tiny studio apartment. There's a graveyard of cola cans along the window sill. The sheets are rolled back on the bed, revealing the mattress. A trail of clothes going out of the bathroom door.

"I've been working for days—not like I've been on any vacation." Tseng unzips the bag and slides out his laptop. Reno watches him through the film of smoke. Tseng organizes his laptop on the messy kitchen table. He grimaces as he uses his elbow to brush aside an empty donut box.

Pens first. Then the paper. Tseng strategically sets them down in a way to avoid the trash. He sits down in the metal chair and flips open his laptop. Has a moment of 'normal' lucidity and glares back at Reno, toking away at his blunt.

"Put that shit out." Tseng says coolly, scratching down the bridge of his nose.

Reno ashes his blunt in an empty energy drink can. He zips his fly then sits down at the table. They stare at each other. Jazz music seeps through the vents of the old building. A long, sigh of a tortured saxophone. Permeating sadness heavy like the humidity trapped inside.

"Are you ok? I thought you were done with the drugs." Tseng pulls a pair of glasses seemingly out of nowhere and adjusts them on his face.

"Ok, but this grows out of the ground. God put it here. Technically it ain't drugs. It ain't poison." Reno gently sits his blunt in a full ash-tray.

Tseng's glasses catch a glare. Reno can't see the electric brown of his eyes, the sunlight is so bright and warm. He sweats profusely.

"Uh huh." Tseng lowers his chin as he pecks away at his keyboard.

"I'm clean. I swear." He is an addict. That part of his personality has to be committed to something. The nothingness is when shit gets scary. The void is a vacuum, searching for an impossible fullness.

"You don't need to prove anything to me. As long as you do your damn job..." Tseng swears like he's reading poetry. It's stiffly authentic, yet smooth and you can never expect when he's going to softly whisper a _Shit_ or bemoan a _Fuck, Shit_ , _Damn it all._

Tseng does care in his own distant way of expressing empathy.

"Are you going to Rufus's party?" Reno isn't. He has had enough cups of Rufus.

"I am. I always go." Tseng tilts his head and his bun comes undone. Reno figures that he must've come here right after stepping off the plane.

It's been so many years, just the two of them. Personally hand-picked by Veld, saved by him, really. Is it savior if they're both still beholden to their trauma?

"You wouldn't be such a fucking workaholic if you got good ass on the regular. You know that right?" Reno messily plaits his rat-tail. Good ass changes everything.

Tseng doesn't smile. He makes a sound like laughter. Barely a snort.

"We addicts have to occupy ourselves with something. Work is all I'm good at. Work gives me stability. Work has never let me down." Tseng glances at him then back at his screen.

"Work ruins your life if you do it too much." A yawning Reno scratches his chest.

"So does pussy." Tseng says seriously over the edge of his glasses.

Reno knows all too well. Today he chooses to laugh about it. He laughs so hard he cries.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"Mama." Aerith sighs into the phone, not knowing what to say to Elmyra. Her golden bracelets slide up and down her thin arms are she moves across the hotel room.

"Are you ok?" Elmyra doesn't ask when she is coming home. Back home, they don't have a television. Elmyra never believed in them. A radio has worked fine. _If the system ain't broken then there's no need to fix it_.

Aerith watches Rufus from early in the morning on her television, gazing almost lovingly back at her. She checks her pulse. Taps her bright red nails at the side of her neck. Inhales, holds it, lets it go. She isn't hot. She isn't cold.

"I'm pretty ok." She nods her head. "I miss you."

"Of course you do. I'm what you know." Elmyra is in the kitchen banging a wooden spoon or a fork against the pot. Aerith imagines it's spaghetti that's she is cooking. Something prevents her from asking. Spaghetti feels like a safe enough assumption. She commits to the image of Elmyra hovering over a pot of spaghetti.

"You're all I know." Aerith smiles.

"I'll be here when you're over the fast company." Elmyra doesn't sound nearly as sad.

"The company isn't fast. It's actually move'n pretty slow." Aerith wonders if this is more of a lie than a big secret.

"I love you." Elmyra breathes shakily into the phone, lifting something she would've gotten Aerith to move.

"I know."

The conversation ends. Aerith tears up when she sits down the receiver. Thousands of feet in the air, practically over the city, in a dress that costs more than her life, and yet she feels a gaping hole in her chest. Nothingness. It is prevalent. She stands in front of the ceiling length mirror. The dress is see-through but her private parts are covered with crawling swirls of flowers that don't resemble anything real. The length of it drags on the floor. The straps are thin but sturdy. The fabric wraps around her body like smoke.

Nothingness grows stronger.

She hears the lock on the door beep. Someone presses inside but Aerith isn't scared. Rufus wouldn't put her in danger. A petite blonde woman in a navy blue suit stands in the doorway.

"Wow. I really should've knocked. I'm so sorry." The woman stutters. Her ShinRa armband fits too big at her elbow.

"No. No. It's fine. I've been cooped up in this room for who knows how long." Aerith is suddenly self conscious about sporting the illusion of nakedness. She pats down her hair and rakes her fingers through the natural brown waves.

"I'm Elena and I'm responsible for you tonight." Elena's boots hit the floor hard as she walks towards Aerith with her hand out.

"I can take care of myself. No one is responsible for me." Aerith takes Elena's hand and gives it a soft shake.

"Well, yea. Technically that is the truth but I'm responsible for any attempts made on your life." Elena pops her gum. "Typical Turk stuff, ya know."

There's an awkward silence when their hands drop. Elena is a few inches shorter than Aerith. It isn't often Aerith meets people shorter than her.

"You're not much of a boogie man." Aerith instantly regrets speaking so rudely. Elena blinks, casting her eyes sideways. She stops rabidly chewing on her gum.

"I'm nowhere near as tall as the other guys but I've got merit. I promise, Miss Ava." Elena is the feminine energy Aerith's been missing since she stepped off the train.

"How many people have you killed?" Aerith doesn't smile.

Elena's eyes are round like saucers. She blows a tiny bubble that pops and sticks all over her pouty lips. As she inhales the gum residue back in her mouth, she beats a small fist against her chest, fighting a torrent of laughter.

"More than you have. I'm certain." Elena is the prettiest girl Aerith has ever seen.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"So how did you meet Rufus?" Elena doesn't look up at the rearview once. She flies through the traffic with a lulling ease that almost puts Aerith to sleep.

"How did we meet?" Aerith then realizes that not everyone is in on the ruse. She and Rufus hadn't discussed an alibi. She rubs her knees together. The wind whips across her face from the back window. Her eyes water.

"Yea! You guys must be pretty serious. I've never had to escort any of the...others.." Elena trails off. "Sorry. That was tacky of me. I swear I'm not a gossip. I guess I'm just a little surprised."

Aerith folds her hands in her lap. She anxiously twists her fingers together.

"You're fine." She reassures Elena. "I'm not offended. I'm...well..."

The conversation deadens right there. Nothing comes after the 'well'. It hits her that everyone is going to ask the same question. Everything is going to fall apart if she doesn't figure it out.

"Where is Reno?" Aerith squeaks from the back seat.

"He's off today."

"Oh."

She was hoping that Reno would be around to see how good she looks when she is done up.

"You like Reno?" Elena pipes up again.

"He's an alright guy." Like isn't even half of it. She is completely taken by him. There is no tangible reason. It's kind of like the body knowing it needs oxygen. Her body wants to know Reno's body.

"I'm gonna disappoint you then. I don't compare." Elena doesn't jerk the car into a stop like Reno.

"You're a better driver than him and you've been very pleasant. I think you're winning." Aerith watches the scenery change from townhouses to mansions. The upper-plate is definitely a separate world from the slums. Each house they pass has the windows open. Aerith can see clean through these houses. Their immaculate decor and their candle lit dinner tables.

"Do you like Reno, Elena?" Aerith fishes.

Elena takes the bait. She gives herself a moment to think of a proper answer.

"I think he's pretty cool. Kind of an asshole but he has good reason." Elena pops her gum loudly.

"What's his reason?" Aerith watches Elena's eyes darting between the fast cars. She eases into the right lane.

"Rough life I suspect?" Elena shrugs. "He's got that hard exterior ya know? To protect himself—it's a defense mechanism."

"Sounds like you've given him a lot of thought." Aerith hangs her hand out the window, squinting against the blast of cool air.

Elena's hands tighten on the wheel.

"My job requires me to be observant. It's a habit. I consider people all the time." She finally answers. They slow into a cove lined with nice cars.

"Must be nice to be seen like that. I want someone to look that hard at me." Aerith perks up her head to look at the massive house covered in biggest windows she's ever seen.

 _Throwing stones at glass houses_. That's what it reminds her of. She watches the dark bodies move together. There's a faint pulse of music but no one is dancing—it could be that it's the kind of music you're not supposed to dance to. Do rich people even need to dance?

"Are you nervous?" Elena taps at the keys on her phone.

Some part of Aerith has been ready for anything all of her life. She can get overwhelmed by the unknown but it also excites her. She beings to salivate. Her eyes widening.

"You bet. Would you take me back if I throw a tantrum?" Aerith ogles at the sparkling light decorations strewn around the tall iron gate. A woman dressed in red with devil horns perched atop her head glides past the their car. The sharp click of her heels against the gravel, a sound that echoes deep within Aerith's void of nothingness. The devil woman slinks around the gate and vanishes in the soft pound of part.

"Can't do, babe." Elena presses the phone to her ear.

The dial tone lasts for what feels like a lifetime until Rufus picks up.

.

.

.

.

* * *

. **A/N: So I'm still trying to work out the kinks in my imagination. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my brain poop. I have nothing profound nor insightful to say. I just wanna feel productive. Anyway. Thanks a bunch for getting this far. I hope you enjoy your stay. Thank you thank you. I know this thing prob has a fuckton of errors. I will get around to fixing them. I'm very drunk right now.**


End file.
